The truth is, I couldn’t see the road you all went down.
I wish I had.
It would have made life easier in a lot of ways.
And I probably would have made a lot of people happier as well.
But I’m not prone to efficiency, to excellency, to excess.
I never have been.
Because when you are near-sighted, you can’t see very far,
either down the road you are riding on,
or down the road of life,
and you just worry about crashing nearby, and soon.
Your nerves are always buzzing,
and you listen for the crash, hoping it never comes.
I know, I should have taken care of my vision,
and learned to see farther away,
a long ways down the road,
to make decisions about how to get where I wanted to go
long before I reached each curve and each intersection.
I couldn’t find a map, and had to follow a path
street by street, light by light,
one start-to-stop at a time.
A lot of times now, the brakes feel soft,
and the alignment feels off.
I can smell oil burning, and the transmission slips,
and I try to just keep driving on,
pretending this machine is fine,
pretending my car is like that car,
that fine new sedan with electronic everything,
and fresh tires on its rims.
I pretend when I pull up to the stop light,
and I see all of the new vehicles around me,
humming and heaving,
power through progress,
shiny chrome and muscular designs,
30 miles to the gallon,
speed and comfort and driving pleasure and space,
I am one of them,
all around me at the light.
I pretend, but when I come home and close the garage door
and walk around this old sleepy jalopy,
it’s hard not to see what it is not.
And I see the road I went down,
and try not to say I wish I had gone down another one,
maybe ending up in a bigger, better, beefier machine,
my life looking much cooler and fuller because of it.
But that’s not the road I went down.
I’m over here,
still moving,
but wondering how I got here,
away from you all,
pretending it’s all good.