Passage

You realized a long time ago that the ocean smells the same everywhere.

Florida humidity nestled in your nasal hairs when you were small.

You carried it home, unaware.

And now it's everywhere that home used to be.

Decades-long olfactory hallucinations

That almost made you angry

Over losing something that was never really yours.

It's yours, but you're still almost angry,

And then the nostalgia hits.

You're elated.

Speeding down the highway to nowhere.

Speeding, speeding, speeding,

Unnecessary miles out of your way

For that pack of cigarettes you told yourself you wouldn't buy,

Just for the sake of driving,

Because you once loved it.

Speeding down the highway,

With the windows rolled down,

Blasting the subversive music of your aging generation,

Screaming-singing along with Rage

At the top of your lungs,

Like you used to when your hair blew wild,

Even while sitting still at the longest red light in the history of travel.

You're alive again,

With no real consequences.

The blank pages sound in your ear,

Like a thousand flip books,

Loud, loud, loud,

And your stereo isn't working hard enough.

You want the steering wheel to vibrate,

So you turn it up, up, up,

Until the music becomes diamonds and colors,

Just like they said it would, if you took just enough LSD.

But instinct tells you to lower the volume to a conservative level,

As you pull into your neighborhood.

Don't be rude.

People might be sleeping, or reading, or crying, or whatever.

They're on the phone.

They're watching live television.

You know exactly how obnoxious you're being.

You remember now that it's been years since you felt confident behind the wheel.

You don't need to look in the mirror,

In order to remember your age.

You don't need to look at your hands,

But you do anyway.

Only the dorsal surface looks different.

Your fingers comb the hair away from your face.

Still wild and tangled,

But thinner.

It didn't register that the clerk didn't ask to see your I.D.

When you bought that pack of cigarettes you told yourself you wouldn't buy.

You don't care.

It's weird,

But you don't care.

You're tired at 9:30,

But you don't care.

You are no longer capable of sleeping past 7 am,

But you don't care.

You can't get high if you want to stay awake,

But you don't care.

You remember that you didn't sing out loud when you were young.

You only sing now when performing the mundane tasks

Of domesticity.

You're calm now

And strangely happier for it.

There's no bribe great enough

To make you want to live those years over again.

You've grown accustomed to 25, 30, 35 mph.

And you suddenly realize you weren't speeding at all.

The highway limit is 55.

You were going 56.

You still felt like a cheetah.