I've been a bit worried as of late, worried for myself, maybe something that has never existed Driving boxes of Midwestern roads I talk, sometimes in consolation, other times in desperation, wanting anything to turn out some solidarity. As the days persist I float through them, already tired, already somewhat dead, as if ghostly I pass from one day to the next, barely leaving a footprint, not seeing my reflection in people that I call friends. Because the ones that used to reflect have now been spat upon and grow dilapidated in time, and in a way I do not any longer exist, but instead just keep returning to places and feelings that remind me of them, as if to see myself better, to construct some abstract creation of self that I'm not even certain I like, but it's an easy cop out to not following through with growing and creating something new. On those same box roads I see out-of-state plates coming home on holiday and vacation, where I can just imagine their thoughts as they pull into the drive and take that deep breath before they unclench the steering wheel and unlock the heavily latched door to their old life, and step in. And no matter their new lives, no matter their accomplishments and new relationships, no matter what new philosophies they have on life or volumes of information they've stuffed into their brains, they will always see an old reflection when home, "in all their looks and words"…though slightly stranger and more alien, with more creases in their face and a certain emptiness in the eyes. It is those feelings and those looks that I see in my dreams, that I wake up thirty, forty, or fifty years old, excited to leave on holiday and forget my new life that I wanted so badly, to come home only to see those old reflections of myself that I loathe and love, that I had tried to forget and despised to see, with my new life huddled like an elephant in the room and the old like a ghost at the dinner table. I'm terrified of this.