This is the part of the movie where the highway is near-

empty at midnight. A song plays quietly as lamplight

reflects off passing windshields into a procession of glowing

specks. The camera pans so the driver’s face is obscured

and daylight’s debris stumbles over the skyline.

This is all the audience sees. Instead imagine it:

the most important kind of sadness. Your clothes

always folded and the bed always made, you do this

because there is an existential understanding—

it’s the routine that saves us. Go to school,

climb into a career, cater to a couple hobbies,

and life becomes passing time until your telomeres

shorten past a point of no return.

In the background the narrator repeats

the cruel joke of walking down the same street

for the thousandth time and expecting to be happy.

In the foreground the car remains lonely in transit,

your lover doesn’t love you anymore, your allegiance

to the algorithm is long gone and the choice is there—

you could keep driving into oblivion or a new distraction

or maybe pull the steering wheel into the wreck-

come-too-soon, but the virtue of turning around

still appeals to you.

© J. David

J. David is from Cleveland, Ohio and serves as poetry editor for Flypaper Magazine.

Find J. David on twitter: @LookingAtLilacs