my life has been a train wreck
that never leaves the tracks
You hear me?
It never jumps never skids never flips into the ravine
like everyone expects it to
No
It stays locked in
steel on steel
screaming forward
like momentum is the only god it ever believed in
And I’m strapped to the front of it
watching the rails rush toward me
like a promise I never made
but somehow still owe
I keep waiting
waiting for the derailment
the explosion
the moment everything finally gives way
But it doesn’t
It just keeps going
Keeps grinding
Keeps tearing through whatever stands in its path
like destruction is the only language
it ever learned to speak
And behind me
behind me the wreckage piles up
twisted metal splintered wood
the ghosts of choices I didn’t even know I made
And I look at it
with a numbness that scares me
a stillness that feels too familiar
Because there’s this sense
this sense of inevitability
like I’m being carried by forces
I can’t slow down
can’t reason with
can’t outrun
Like the universe threw me on these tracks
and said
“Hold on
Or don’t
It won’t change the speed”
And every month
every damn month
I feel the collapse coming
the same cycle
the same fear
the same storm gathering at the edge of everything
Nothing will ever be the same once it hits
I can feel myself being torn
between the ruins behind me
and the disaster still rolling toward me
loud and certain
as thunder on an open field.
And loneliness
loneliness doesn’t knock
It doesn’t ask
It settles in like weather
At first it’s just a chill
a shift in the wind
something you think will pass
if you just wait long enough
But it lingers
It hangs in the air
the way November cold hangs over the North Country
slow, creeping
sliding into your bones
until it becomes part of you
A season that refuses to change
A forecast that never clears
And I tell myself
there’s no stopping the storm
There’s only standing in it
Only feeling the ache of it
Only bracing for the next impact
as the rails hum beneath me
and the world blurs past the windows
The pain is real
The heaviness is real
The storm is real
And some days it feels like that’s all there is
But listen
even in the wreckage
I’m still here
Still on the tracks
Still breathing in the smoke
and the cold
and the truth of it all
I am the wreck
and the survivor
The disaster
and the witness
The storm
and the one still standing in the rain
And maybe
maybe that has to count for something
About The Author
