The Drive
The lines of the highway blur, and I drift.
We’ve been driving for days, subsisting on shitty rest-stop food and stale bottled water. The car smells like an animal cage; a feral nest of unwashed hair and soiled underclothes. We’ve taken turns driving but she’s gotten so weak that I’ve had to do the last few shifts while she sleeps in the back, curled up across the seat under an old grey blanket.
The road is our home now, with its unforgiving rules and ever-present dangers. Our roommates come and go in all shapes and sizes and dispositions. Some are wild and fill us with terror as they careen past, willfully ignorant the speed limit. Other join us for long stretches, riding either fore or aft, like some lost convoy of complete strangerhood. We grow comfortable in their companionship: so much so that their leavings go noticed, for there are no goodbyes, only exit ramps.
I’m more tired than I’ve ever been, but the drive sustains me. In it there is purpose, and a destination. It’s more than I’ve had in months, and it fills me with a burning purpose that knows only the gas gauge and the pedal that drains it. And so, I keep pressing down.
I keep pressing down.
First draft: 140903
Published: 230429