The 1:00 AM sky is inky dark and pushes heavily down on the earth. No moon. No stars. No aircraft. Just the abyssal night shrouding the street. The streetlights struggle to break through the shadows, barely getting their cold, weak light to brush the asphalt below.
I’d taken the slowest route home, staring blanky ahead at the pool of light my car spilled across the long empty roads. I thought nothing. I felt nothing. Didn’t see much, either. The air from the open windows bit at my neck and ears, chilled my face, but I barely registered it at all.
It’s so dark driving up the foothills that I can almost imagine I’m back in the mountains of Oregon, being driven way too fucking fast by the love of my life down a remote canyon road deep in the woods. I stare up into that immense sky and try by force of will to turn this wide road into a narrow, winding path lined with trees.
I had been so afraid on those desolate two-lane roads, anticipating a reaper with every flash of headlights, bracing for impact around every bend. Now I’d kill to return to that moment. To go back to that night, back to that me. The me who belonged to someone. The me who belonged to the one.
I turn off the main road onto a quiet residential street. Some of the homes twinkle with Christmas lights, and the illusion of my memory dies completely. In its absence, the only thing left is a lonely woman in a dinged-up car, too homesick to breathe.
Method of Mancy 