I'm driving down the interstate
i've got an hour and a half till I reach home
it's 10:30 pm and ......I'm alone.
and i don't know if its because i'm alone or because its night or because its both that I start sinking
Down into my thoughts
an uncomfortable disease but a comfortable numbness
to the girl who feels to much.

As I was driving I began thinking about how things ended up like this?
How you started putting up thick glass walls with a closed curtain wherever I used to be able to enter in
a concussion waiting to happen
because I used to not have to ask for permission
and when i ask you will gouge out my eyes
because you can't hide the guilt
of overgrown insides coming out of your face.

How the one time I poured out dripping paint bottles of every color till they were empty down the stream
in an attempt to make a watercolor I made muddy water filthy
and you mocked me.
You the cleansing rain who was pure enough for any man
You the garden whose soil could birth life from any death
You the lovers
You the adventures
You the foreigners
to the girl who feels too much.

How does one get to the scene of a car wreck
when there is traffic, distance, and impatience in-between
where you need to be
and where you were six months ago.


I started thinking,
wondering,
If I was getting bad again
and
what the heck that meant.
and if the numbness of the night is just an aesthetic
giving drugged consent to the monsters
so that they can wreck havoc
without me experiencing any of the consequences
at least
not until morning.

I started thinking about the future
and
what the heck that meant
and how it feels more like the present
except its not gift wrapped
its a broken duck taped
cardboard box.
When I pick it up it feels like nothing
When I shake it it sounds like
people telling me to
go back to school
people telling me
to get a job
people asking me
"what are you doing?"
and "when?"
and "how?"
which are all things I don't have the answer to.

People say I have time
but there's only an hour left on this highway
and I am miles behind
watching every tail light pass.

But as I notice the taillights I notice the headlights
and remember that when I was little I used to squint my eyes at them
tilt my head from side to side
and make them dance.
Then I began to think about hope
and how it is nowhere and everywhere
in nothing
and in everything
the difference
is up to you.
How just as the waves never grow tired of kissing the shore
The stars never grow tired of shining into the night
No matter how dark and how hard it may be sometimes
They shine.
and if a speck of burning exploding gas can fight and sacrifice itself to be a dot of light in a dark world
Then I will poke holes with this pencil into my consuming darkness
and explode into my own night sky
leaving those who take the time to notice in breathless awe.
Because darkness might be the blanket you sleep under
but hope is the pillow under your head, the person you're sleeping next to, the stuffed animal you've cuddled with since you were five.

And If there is hope in the stars
then there is hope in the streetlights
and the headlights
and the city lights
for they would serve no purpose without their dark.
So I too will strike a match of purpose against my dark
and even when they go out
I will strike
I will strike
and I will strike
because sometimes hope is work
but it's in endless supply
and sometimes just like the lights on a cell tower
hope blinks.

Maybe I am bound to be the girl who feels too much
with the car wreck life
and the cardboard box
and veins that will always half expect to be put to sleep
but as I pull into my driveway
I notice
I never did have an empty passenger seat.