It happens quickly.

I'll be rushing down the highway, my mind in a thousand different places, and it happens.

I could be angry with you, or myself, or our circumstances, or not angry at all, but it happens.

It happens quickly.

All it takes is the name of your city.
All it takes is a kid in a uniform,
a song by that one band you like so much,
a stone angel worshipping a god you no longer believe in.

It happens quickly.

All it takes is
that infernal set of railroad tracks we crossed a hundred times,
a glance at my battered, water-damaged watch,
putting gas in my tank and wondering if this is the day that I won't stop driving, the day that I just drive until I can see you and make sure you know that I care, and I always will.

All it takes is one of those little reminders,
those memorial elements, and
I'm gone.
I'm back in that moment that was empty and quiet
but heartwrenchingly vital.
There was nothing but the rise of your chest from slow steady breaths, the sound of your heartbeat pounding like my favorite bassline,
the glimmering stars we couldn't see,
the smell of smoke and wet grass and contentment.
The enveloping feeling that the world will survive if we escaped for an hour,
that regrets are nonexistent,
that for once in my life my inadequacies are not so painfully obvious and I feel loved.

It happens quickly.