moments & mountains.

It was too dark to see the time exactly. She gave him credit for his thoughts, although too many of them made the space seem crowded and claustrophobia came like a mosquito on a summer night; pinching and driving her to scream.

She looked out the window and her heart sped up, not long ago she was on the road nearby and nobody could even read her face, let alone her mind. Now she was stuck and he seemed almost psychic.

Silently, she screamed that she wanted to leave.

“Not yet,” he said aloud. He spoke her greatest fears- her worst nightmares, his voice full of uncertainty and yet deep control. Her heart shriveled into its hole on the left side of the center console.

She lost it there. Waiting. Wishing she could be free again. Waiting. Wishing. Waiting.

Soon enough, though, she was driving down the road, and none of it had happened. It was all a thing of the past, a brake light’s breadth of life away.

It seemed a moment altogether too far from her to see clearly in the rear-view mirror. She tried to ignore the disclaimer, but some haunting, fleeting thought found her.

OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.

And there they were: crowded, lost, and left behind.
It was too dark to see the time exactly, but she felt it might be time to move on.