What is Life?

Life is getting out of bed tired this morning, snailing to the bathroom, and finding out that my sister has left the top of the toothpaste ***** again. Life is drinking orange juice with that toothpaste taste still in my mouth.
Life is driving to school and missing the right ramp to get off of the highway.
It is cussing loudly in an empty car.

Life is coasting down the highway in between two huge, Moses-parting-the-red-sea, concrete walls.

It is reminiscing about magnificent popsicles from the ice cream man.
Life is realizing how ***** the ice cream man’s van really was.
Life is being that one kid whose dad bought him a pink bike at a garage sale.
Life is losing the reader before the poem even began.

Life is “Santa clause is real but not in the way you thought he was.”
Life is always being too obvious or being inscrutable.
Life is having a correct answer on a test then changing it.

I look out the window and see the night sky —millions of blinking glass shards on black pavement.
Life is craving to drive on that endless milky road instead of the road you are driving on to get to your school at three o’clock in the morning.
Life is driving an extra ten minutes because you missed that exit on the highway.
Life is the High School Cafeteria.
Life is your best friend who stabs you in the back.
No it’s not, life is like not having any best friend in the first place but telling your parents you do.
Life is arriving at school and entering through a pre-opened window in the dark then climbing through the vents in order to break into the math office to steal the semester exam answers.
Life is stopping - and turning back at the last minute and driving home to probably fail the test and class the next day.
Life is the divorce rate in America.
Life is the same boring start of a line over and over again.
Life is people politely nodding and saying “Yah” even if they couldn’t understand what you said.
Life is teens throwing handfuls of coins at each other’s (parents’) cars for fun at the stop light before getting on to the highway.
Life is the beggar watching them from the side of the street in the cold.

Life is not noticing that there are a lot of cars on the highway at this time of night.
Life is driving home at four o’clock in the morning.
Life is imagining your warm bed while you drive.
Life is breathing more slowly.
Life is the mellow rhythm of the highway humming underneath your wheels.
The music rocks on “Life is life, na na na na na.”
Life is soul-stirring music making you tired.
Life is a small brook bubbling silently through some far away woods.
Life is closing your eyes while driving for only three seconds.

I **** my eyes open just as sheets of heat from the air conditioning cover my body.

Life is the confidence that you can stay awake with your eyes shut for longer this time.
It is closing your eyes for 6 seconds. Then another 6 seconds.
Life is the reader knowing that you will close your eyes for 6 seconds a third time. It is them reading on excitedly.
Life is splattered all over the side of the highway.
Then life is the traffic flying past the spotless side of the highway the next day.

“What is life?”

Life is the disappointing last line of a poem.