The steward cuts us at 1:30am. The show is in the trucks. Where are they going next? One of the roadies (Sean?) tells me, but I forget. Somewhere in the States I've never heard of.

My little car, my little Wallace, is cold. The roads are wet, wet. A rainstorm just passed over. The streetlamps glitter in the raindrops on my windshield.

I gas up, then pull onto the highway.

The trees lining the road are silhouettes, black paper cut-outs. The sky is orange with bleeding streetlight. There are few other cars on the road in the wee monday morning hours. A few long-haul truckers, blazing down the highway at twenty above the speed limit.

The road is so wet, I can see almost a perfect reflection of the sky.

I drive ten under.

~

I delete Tindr, and Bumble, and OKcupid off my phone. I just can't deal with it.

Watching porn makes me feel lonely.

Packages and letters litter my bed, unsent.

Bill reminders sit open on my computer, but I avoid looking at my bank account statement.

I get a letter from my friend who just had a baby, a single mulberry sheet in her sloping, rolling handwriting. A probe, testing my silence.

A package for her sits on my bed, unsent, the letter inside full of anxiety and doubt. I think about tearing it up, writing a new one.

Books pile up, unread. I jam all my fabric back onto shelves, out of my mind.

The only thing that progresses is my self portrait. I fiddle with it, fiddle with it, buy new brushes and fiddle again. I look so beautiful in it, it feels like lying. But I continue to paint, and repaint, and repaint.

A short bristle brush scrubs circles under my eyes.

~

I crank the music. I can work the knobs on my car now without looking at them. I know them all by touch.

The radio plays weird ass stuff this early in the morning.

The road is so slick. I can feel my tires hydroplane, and I slow down even more. The world is copper and black.

"Turn left onto--"

My gps reminds me I've routed my route around the toll bridge. Fucking toll bridge.

I begin to think. Of those extra nine minutes added by the reroute. The isolated patch of dark highway. The rain-slicked roads. The ancient, knobbly bridge I'd have to take instead.

"Turn left--"

I don't turn. I will suck up the toll tonight.

A cop car passes me, the only other car on the road. I am doing fifteen under.

Miles to go before I sleep.

.

Rosie.

Before&After