wanderlust, only it hurts

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the gray sky hung heavy over me and so did the strangers whose lives slipped past me on the other side of the road. me and the strangers. i think maybe people you dont know are called strangers because its strange to think that they have intricate, messy, elaborately layered lives that you can only guess at.

but i digress.

everything is strangely (there it is again) muted and quiet when its gray outside. the trees switch in their green for something subtly different, like an inside joke just for the daydreamers. the highway's double yellow lines burn into my eyes and the road is mostly deserted and i think about swerving into the wrong lane. how long it would take for disaster to strike, or, if im being dramatic, deaths hand to reach down and cover my soul in his cold dark.

i also think of how easy it would be for me to disappear. i am alone in my car and i have a few dollars but disappearing could mean anything. it could be more permanent than immediate thought allows.

but im driving home. im driving home and im trying not to cry in this gray landscape that looks like a painting, this gray landscape that begs me to roll the car, to jerk the wheel, to wander into the brush strokes and stay among the slightly skewed familiarity. its cracking my chest open and crawling between my ribs.

and maybe, when im older and somehow, simultaneously, less afraid and more afraid, i really will disappear.

and it doesnt matter if i do so on this very road or somewhere else.

because this feeling in my ribs is more permanent than myself.

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