when taking back roads

thick smog leaving its filthy fingers across every surface/ a heavy weight pushing us down to the pavement/ drawing our shoulders downward and our fingers tightening on the wheel// remember gravity?// it asks. look up and remember you are hanging upside down, holding onto the face of this planet with nothing but threads. //dark shapes of barns and houses/ tall fences and machinery. to keep us out, or something else in? We turn away and press our foot on the gas. s/trange movements of weeds and animals/ something that is almost a cat peers from behind the creek bend/ narrow eyes glinting in the headlights/

anxious car, creeping between looming trees and speeding over bridges drowned in shadows. The fog lights do not share its secrets. We do not look.

the temperature is flat, an uncomfortable lack of feeling like a chill in our bones. the ac does little to keep it from seeping between the cracks in the window// vehement wind, dragging the car toward the endless fields. the haze is relentless. We do not know how far it goes. We do not want to know.

it is too quiet/ the radio seems to fade in and out of our ears/ swallowed by the dark.

the world is empty, only swaying wheat and broken fence. like We’re the only ones alive, passenger seat empty and cold. the sky is orange tinged, and the heavy pollution makes it easy to believe that everything ended. not with a bang, but the collective choking of burning throats and dirty lungs.

and yet we keep driving,

the road keeps yawning ahead of us,

and the the sky stays the same strange dusky grey,

even though it’s three am and it should be a deep, inky violet with brilliant stars telling

their stories in the sky;

cicadas singing softly and tire swings groaning on gentle oak limbs.

This is just a random word flow idk if it even made sense I just need to publish something haha