You want someone, a scientist perhaps, to explain why so many people are killed by drunk drivers each year. You want them to say that a body in motion tends to stay in motion, that if one car hits another the body will still go through the windshield on impact. Movement is such a terrifying thing. It can destroy people; it can make them fall in love. You want that difference to be utterly clear. And maybe it will be, but maybe it won’t. Maybe you’ll go for long walks in the dark when everyone else is asleep just to feel the wind touch your skin, because you’re so goddamn lonely that there’s nothing else.
Life is not constant. You know that. You realize that, but deep down in the marrow of your bones you don’t want to believe it. When a cigarette is lit in a faraway country you can still see it from your dorm window, burning like the fire in your heart that won’t go out. Here is the land, the oceans, and all the world in between. There is no punctuation in its undulation, no ellipses in its crevasses and valleys. When you touch the man you’ve brought home from the bar he feels like God and you feel yourself returning home. But maybe it’s just the grief talking; maybe when he leaves you’ll be left staring up at the ceiling in a bed filled with his scent. And the kitchen will be empty, something you’re not used to, and the man you used to love who is no longer here, who is no longer with you, who is no longer with the world and who was killed by a fucking goddamn car crash by a goddamn drunk driver, will be nowhere to be found. The chairs and tables will stare at you, silently calculating the depths of your grief like an ocean without bounds.
Maybe you’ve come so far that you won’t know how to stop, that you’ll pick up the bottles of liquor and whiskey and smash every one of them against the wall, till the sound of the breaking glass begins to mix with the sound of your shattering heart. When you were younger you were fed chicken soup when you were sad; your mother took your temperature while smoking a cigarette that smelled like mint leaves, and everything was better. Not now. You want to question your existence, to slam it to the floor and stomp on it and rip it to pieces.
And when the morning comes you’ll do it all over again, and his name will be echoing in your head the whole time.