Driving down abandoned stretches of highway,

shadowy outlines of trees become one

as the forest creeps by my dusty car window,

the radio softly hissing out Pink Floyd

filling my dented with Toyota with haunting notes,

I noticed the flittering white stars

are drifting further away.

When I was a child

the stars seemed so close,

barely out of reach from my small fingers.

I was sure in a few years,

when I grew a couple feet,

I would be able to pluck them out of the night sky

and store them in a jar like fireflies,

punching holes in the metal lid with a screwdriver

so they could breathe.

Now I stand on the brink of adulthood,

with all of its miseries,

and the stars are billions of miles away,

forever outside of my grasp. 

Every day that I can summon enough strength

to get out of bed,

every time I leave myself open

only to be rejected,

every moment I see the world as it truly is

and it breaks my heart,

They float further into the distance,

until they disappear into the twilight,

leaving me lost in the void.

The meaning of my life is to peer into the abyss

and observe the heavens vanish.

It’s my duty to watch as the stars leave me

to my lonely fate,

without tears or laments.

But I drive these black roads every evening

hoping to stumble onto an unknown destination

or cement the isolation of a blackening sky.