You’ll find me crashed somewhere down that lonely road; under the bridge where the trains squeal their discontent and the moon glows faintly through a haze of listlessness. Follow the smell of gasoline and musty old emotions and I’ll be there sitting on the crumpled hood of my car, hair all about, carelessly smoking a cigarette and flirting with the idea of explosion. I’ll be smirking probably, with maniacal laughter filling my eyes that scream I got you; and you’ll wonder if this was all a game.
Put that out, you tell me and I’ll be sending the butt spinning from my fingers into the night where the embers will flicker and sputter in dispute as they die on the damp pavement. You’ll ask where I was headed anyways, and I explain that this town is full of ghosts; can’t go back there. I sit on my car and you look uneasy in your pale skin. You’re good at destroying everything you get close to, you remind me as you take in the totalled car and the mess I managed to find myself in.
Then don’t get close to me, I reply. Leaving me here with the shadows is fine because I’m all wrong for you and I am a disaster. You can’t cope with me. I have baggage stored in coffins back in the trunk of my station wagon. You will look upset and my laughter shatters the silence of the wharf and the drip drip from the tracks spatters its applause. The trains are always company, they speak the language of loneliness and I can chase the daylight across the country; searching for the sunrise. I’ll find it where I started; before the crumpled cars and broken hearts and the hims and yous and hers of my past.
You tell me you care about me and I ignore you as I pick at the callus on my middle finger. It’s not worth reminding you that I don’t as much. Too much writing not enough talking, I tell you. Your footsteps cross the space between us, and you move my suitcases from my car to yours. Without looking up I’ll tell you I wasn’t planning on taking those anyways and without a word you put them back. Drip drip. Your feet shuffle. Drip drip. I'll find myself irritated again. Drip drip. This isn’t going anywhere, you say and I glare at you. Of course not, idiot, look at my car. This hasn’t been going anywhere for a while.
Come with me; your pleading disgusts me. You promise to take me far away from these things that hold me down; promise things will work out in the end; promise I’ll be happy. But you fail to mention where we are going and fail to ask where I would want to go. I’m bored under the bridge; this conversation is a rerun. I click to change the channel.
A train is coming. The tracks are screaming, wailing, complaining and the train is calling my name. You know I’m leaving and you know you won’t follow me. Your voice follows me, asking me to wait for you, but the look on my face says all the words I know I’m too weak to tell you. I’m running forward, it says, pressing onward. If you want to find me you’ll have to catch up. And the night swallows you whole, stuck at the end of the road as my steaming car ignites with the last breath of the cigarette butt; turning the burdens into ash.
You know that not even you can hold me down; especially now that I’m racing towards the sunrise.
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