Headlights

This is certainly not love. Not longing, exactly, no broken hearts. Perhaps heartache, perhaps the still more dangerous heart hope. I used to believe that love was a destination at the end of  a freeway, straight and swift as the blurred Autobahns of last Spring. But I believe there are more twists and potholes than suspected. Most love lanes have already been patched up and re-paved, but their flaws can't be erased because you can feel them every time you drive those routes again.

 I was just a dead end street on yours. One you turned down anyways, by accident or perhaps because there is freedom to be found in getting lost. But I am not your destination, not the moment where you turn off the ignition and your body sinks into the joy of solid ground again, heavy as a heartbeat. I am not love. But I was part of the journey, and I have to keep reminding myself that that was enough. This is enough.

My happiness is, after all, a matter of self-determination. I lay claim to it as a girl who's never let her joy depend on anything her legs couldn't reach, anything her hands couldn't hold. Good luck on your road. Someday I'll be driving by on my own, parallel, leaving only the rush of wheels on road and the blur of speeding headlights to remind you I was here.

Until then,

-M