You've Had Your Silver Lining

There is a heaviness to the drive home;
a sense of looming doom to midnight on Sunday.
The end of an era
and the beginning of fresh and fearful days.
It's all I can do to keep my eyes forward
fighting my arms from pulling the wheel
sideways and sideways and sideways and backwards
and back to where she's still parked.

A face isn't much to go by.
You can't know a person by looking at their face.
You can't know a soul by seeing its eyes.
You can't guess the color of a world by hearing its song
or know the slow, steady march of a heart's heady beat,
the unrhyming rhythm that withers and writhes in the heat
just by fingers that clutch the wheel so tightly...
Maybe I'll let them turn
sideways and that's all.
Off the on-ramp and down the side.
Crash.
The worst I can do is survive.

I found myself jealous.
I looked inside and I saw jealous.
Folded my arms and watched the screen play failure...
failure to get the timing right.
I watched her with spider eyes,
my legs a loom on the far wall,
spinning webs I thought innocent enough.
She buzzed like a lost moth for a time
drawn to what might have been flame...might have been mine.
But only a brief spark...only a broken and awkward end.
And I with my spider eyes
watched her flit away like a fairy,
fairly certain I'd made my mark.
Only a small spark.
Only a very small spark.

"You've had your silver lining,"
the clouds say...as if they knew.
"You've had your godsend."
I dread to find what I may be finding.
Because if it's true,
what then?
The sight of the familiar is failing
while we're still broadcasting live.
The core of me is ailing
and the worst I can do is survive.