Your veins have begged you to run since the first beat of your heart.

It’s a call you can’t ignore forever,

but after three hours of driving toward Anywhere North Of This God-Forsaken Place,

trees turn into looming soldiers lining the highways with their guns pointed at heaven,

fingers grazing the trigger,

hesitation setting the interstate ablaze.

All the songs on the stereo are starting to sound the same and it’s suffocating you,

so before your eyelids can’t stay open any longer,

you turn the car around.

You are driving beneath vandalized tunnels and six feet of your own indifference,

writing pages and pages about yourself in the second-person

as if to project that apathy toward an invisible You.

You’re me. I just don’t admit it,

because people get uncomfortable when others acknowledge the fact that

we’re all driving away from something.

I won’t even mention the car with the “APATHY” license plate

that has followed you since you left home.