When I ran in the morning to school, the air would fog in front of me but I ran past the fog before it had time to float. I toured past houses of girls I liked. Sometimes one or two windows would be lit, & I could envision their faces, deciding which shirt to wear. Fastening their hair back with a green elastic band that had gold sparkles spiraling around it.
When you are lying in the car crash of forever, your guts literally smeared across the asphalt, when the traffic slows & backs-up for miles. When you no longer care who sees you or if your underwear is dirty or even if you are wearing underwear. When you don't give a fuck about what is exposed, that is when they will care all the more. Even as the traffic jam goes from 1 mile long to 2 or 3 miles, the people going past will slow even more, craning their necks to see you, the body with your arm at that weird angle & your face pressed against the guard wall like a child snuggled to a blanket. The less you care, the closer you will be to the truth; love; God; absence of time. The less you care, the more fascinated the crowd will be. The less you care to be like one of us, the more you will be like all of us. And what will you remember?
My grandparents lived a block away from the high school, & I would wake at 5:30 or 6 to jog 3 miles to their house in the dark so no one could see me. What I want to remember is the warm kitchen, the German Shepherd creaking over the wooden floor of the musty back porch, the eggs frying on the gas stove, the smell of food in the garbage disposer as I stuck my head under the sink to rinse my hair.