Seems like it always midnight...

So Friday afternoon, and I'm steadily edging ahead of the last of rush hour traffic. Passing some shirtless midget with a mullet in a primer-red pick-up.

I think to no one but the wiper blades: "What the fuck am I doing?" as I return to the right lane.

Just running away from an empty home and an even emptier life? Heading to the folks' for sympathy and home cooking. Sugarcoated memories.

Have I really forgotten what made me leave in the first place? Or Am I hoping to live it right this time?

It isn't really about them, is it? It's about me. It's about my mistakes, my life, and my memories that haunt me and taunt me like the rain against the windshield. I really wanted to wash my car today...

I see the exit approaching; 2 miles. Should I just keep going. It's a few hundred more miles from where I've always thought I should be. Has that been sugarcoated too?

Was it always this cold on this interstate? When I was 19 I used to sneak back this way at 3a.m. after doing things that would make my mother wonder what she'd done wrong.

Perhaps it was what she'd done right that made her never question where I was or what I'd done. I was taught, indirectly, to hold on to what you can in life, because very little is truly constant.

What is constant for me these days?

The emptiness I feel on nights like this when the rain is coming down and there's nothing to hold on to except a feather pillow and a memory.

The "what-ifs," the "I could-have’s," and the siren outside at any given hour.

Is it a sad song on the radio and the scratch in my throat while I sing every word as if I had written them?

Or is it the midget in the pick-up, which I always seem to be passing, but just can't seem to lose.