Car Thoughts
Six forty-two
Sun coming up
Coffee tastes terrible
Good.
Normal. Everything's normal.
Back on the highway,
window cracked
Laughing at myself like,
“Imagine that”
Talking to a seat like somebody sat there Yeah,
lack of sleep does weird shit,
that's fair
So we're done with that Moving along
Find some station, turn on a song Static Another one
Static again
Perfect
Even the radio don't wanna be my friend (chuckle)
See?
That's funny.
That's normal funny.
Except
I remember every word too clean
Every little pause, every ugly thing And I know dreams blur,
exhaustion bends
But why'd it know where the story ends?
“You always leave.”
There
it is again.
No.
That's memory.
Probably.
Maybe.
Whatever. Keep driving.
Sun in the mirror,
hands at ten-two
Trying not to think about what I knew
Before that voice ever opened its mouth
Maybe it didn't tell me anything new
Turn it up
Make it loud Give me something
To drown me out
Bass in the doors Static in my head
Anything's better Than hearing what I said Turn it up
Don't let it fade
I don't wanna hear What
my own mind says
Maybe the passenger wasn't a ghost Maybe the voice was the part
I hate most The part that remembers the shit I excuse The
part keeping score when I swear that I moved The part that
knows who I blamed too fast Who I cut off,
who I dragged through the past Who I still miss but refuse
to call
Who deserved better, who didn't at all
And now I'm doing ninety with thoughts in formation Stacking accusation on
accusation Rearranging conversations, changing narration Trying to find one version where I'm
not implicated Wait Slow down
That's exactly what I do Take a memory
Twist the frame Make the ending easier to view Damn.
Maybe that's why the voice sounded like me.
... Because it was.
So now I'm picking apart every sentence and motive
Every defense I constructed and coated Every regret that I buried and
folded Every “I'm fine” that I knew was loaded Running from places,
running from faces Running from names and familiar locations But if the
thing chasing me lives in my thinking Then every new road is
the same destination
Turn it up
Make it loud
Give me something To drown me out
Bass in the doors Static in my head
Anything's better Than hearing what I said
Volume twenty
Twenty-five Thirty Speakers shaking
Good. Can't hear myself now.
... Almost.