lovely thoughts. lovely words.

whitegirlblackmagic:

Driving down the dimly lit country road, I felt like a character in a movie. Hardly awake and alone, I counted the few cars that passed…checking their license plates for green lettering should they be cops. My record can’t handle another black mark, my insurance can’t afford me. I’m a never-ending liability, speeding from city to city all over this state every damn day, racking up 50,000 miles a year.

But I crave the movement.

The whole thing is silly, really. As if knowing they were cops after they had already passed would give me enough time to avoid another speeding ticket.

But I check anyway, every single one, instead of just slowing down.

I’m in a hurry to get home.

About 10 minutes from my destination, there is a driveway that always strikes me as significant. Some nights, by lucky coincidence, I am crossing that driveway the same time its owner is turning to travel down it.

The headlight beams disappear and smooth over the grass on either side of the gravel path, then shift their glance to the siding of the home, ricocheting between the walls inside, off the hanging picture frames and over the empty couch just inside the front windows. It’s not what it highlights that intrigues me, just that it’s moving across the landscape in a way that seems too important to ignore.

But there is no reason why.

The car rolls to a stop, and the driver turns off its engine.

What happens after that I never know. I wonder if the driver sighs when stepping out of the car—eyes dropping to the door handle to push it shut, shoulders drooping as they step forward, feet crunching against the rocks they are slowly grading to a fine, sandy powder. Each day leaving less of a mark and more dust behind.

But that’s not my story. It’s theirs.

And there is no reason why it is and is not. It just isn’t. And it just is.

I’ve got about five minutes left, now. The streetlights have dwindled to a few every couple thousand feet. And the darker it gets on these roads, the closer I know I am to home.

In the summer, cottonwood trees reach for their sibling limbs on the other side of the street, creating a canopy across the asphalt, gentling huddling over me as I drive. Come falltime the leaves from those limbs dance down onto my windshield, waving in my wiperblades, caressing the hood.

In winter, the streets kiss my wheels with frost.

In spring, there’s nothing but the breath of sparkling life, bursting from the buds on all the thousands of twigs that resisted snapping in the snow just a few months ago.

The stone walls at the head of my parents’ driveway act as eyes of the estate, taking in all those who travel down its nose. I must be familiar as a favorite teacup that makes its appearance as comfort as such is needed by now.

When I get up to the house I look up instead of down at the gravel near my worn tires. I practically lose my breath and audibly gasp upon seeing what’s above me. There isn’t a sky like this anywhere near the city, though I know it’s the same one, the only one, everywhere.

Inside the house under this sky are two people who love me with such unconditional zeal that I couldn’t even fabricate a reason for it.

But there are reasons.

And there are reasons I love them that much back.

And there are scientific explanations behind the brightness of the sky in the middle of the night and the changing of the trees with each season.

It’s just not necessary to know the why.

It’s always the what.

jamie ferguson, my old roommate, is an amazing writer. i love love lovee this piece. :) tell me you couldn’t picture this perfectly in your head by the way she’s placed these words onto paper, let alone feel it.