This is not how I always imagined it to be. You and me, sitting in an empty car, in an empty town, waiting for the gas to fill up the empty tank in our empty lives. We turn onto the open highway and run into a rare instance of Saturday night dinner traffic, so we roll the windows down and let the cool evening air wash over us, watching as the sunset turns the sky dusty pink, luring Venus out from the horizon. It's a slow crawl on the interloop, but that is okay because it is May and little else matters at this point. In fact, at this very moment, I could even say I was content; content with staring at the blue sky all my life, sitting on books, and pressing flowers until they are dry. It's just so easy to keep doing the same thing over and over again.

So when we finally finally reach that goddamned fork in the road, I say "Don't" like I always have. Because I know better than anyone else, even you with your half-mocking lopsided smile, that if we take the wrong fork, we would never come back. We would keep driving until we see the Northern lights in the distance, until we reach the Arctic circle and hear the soft crunch of permafrost underneath our feet, until we finally drown in all the overwhelming beauty of freedom. It wouldn't be a bad way to die, I sometimes think.