highway

I can feel the car drift as it shifts across lanes, passing over the neon dirt that fills the puckered holes in the asphalt. The shining signs whip closer, and against the soft relentless rain, the persistent hum of the wheels filters foggily into my tired head. 

My sweater is too warm, and it smells musty. The damp from the air clinging to the fabric that leeches scents from every place we’ve been: The dentist’s sterile mint, grease and acid from the ketchup and fries, the skunk we may have hit, wet carpets, the burning dust in the AC, cleaning products in the gas station bathroom, soft pretzels from Target, your shampoo.

This haven of restless sleep and gas station detritus feels separate from the rest of time. There is no present here. There is no other choice but to be lost in limbo between where I've been, and where I’m going.

I lay in a daze, caught in waves of suffocating aches for home ahead of me, and you behind me.