"Roads"

There’s a road everyone speaks about. It’s a cliché nostalgia to writers, a rerun in linear perspective that artists are only too eager to change the channel on, and for the realists—a piece of pavement everyone wishes at one time or another, to get onto, and to get off of.  Yet, when it comes to the theme of our lives, we want to know right where this road is. What avenue? What exit do we take to get onto it? We spend every ounce of ourselves to figure out that we are all born on this road, yet we squander twice that to figure out where our road will go. Or how to fill the potholes, even how to save the lives of those who have crashed onto it. The cars that seemingly date our roads, marry our roads, and have baby cars on our roads, all become flashes on the “caution: roadwork ahead” sign that slows us to a near halt. Eventually we haunt our roads. Learning we ourselves have crashed every couple of miles and our shoes have been ripped clean off of our feet in the process. Now, all that’s left is to walk and feel every piece of rubble we created. Every so often we collapse from dehydration, and as our faces lay against the pavement we apologize to ourselves. We apologize for not drinking enough; we apologize for wanting so badly to get onto this road in the first place—despite the fact that we were all born here. We apologize for all the coulda, shoulda, wouldas that make up the car crashes, the engine stalls, the bare feet, the speeding tickets making up every meter, in every mile, that we’ve traveled. When we finally forgive ourselves for not buying a GPS (not that we could have anyway), we begin the process of traveling down our roads again. On occasion, much like a housewarming, we find ourselves in a car with a group of people; they leave on will, you never open the door for them. That’s a rule of the road. You never open the door for them. That’s just how it is. So as we hear the car doors slam and open back up we wonder how long it’ll take us to get to the next rest stop. We wonder why we even bothered getting onto the exits we have. Nonetheless, what we can all discern for ourselves, without any wondering, is that our roads will never leave us behind. We continue down our roads changing the channel so not to upset the artists; we continue down our roads forcing the writers to suck on ice to help their upset stomachs, and we continue down our roads for the realists—because after all, if we didn’t, then the one who manufactures our roads would be out of order; ironically, like our only gas station.