I’m on my way home too late at night, driving pass the blur of a sleepy 1am Chicago. It rained hours ago, but the lights still echo off of wet pavement. The air from the car window, cold and fast, rushes in and near chokes the song lyrics from my breath. But I sing over the rush and out towards the right autumn sky. It’s one of those "I am alive" kind of moments. You know, the ones that spray your spiral notebook pages for years. It’s the kind of awkward poetry you can’t quite scribble now, no matter your focus or resolve.
I drive and drive, slow in my haze, and only half observant of the anxious headlights stringing past and into the skyline.
I have actually lived. I am a form reflected in the windshield, a figure without critiqued features. No cars to the left, and none to right. No one to hear me scream off-key odes to the eighth-grader hiding in my heart. No eyes available to scrutinize the curves or flatness of my torso and chest.
I am the genderless, a warrior of the road, spitting out across the skyline on a late-night stumble home. I am still the songs I sang in high school, and the ones I will write at the end of my minutes.