Lunacy

The moon hangs from the sky like a tired eye, as my eyes hang also, exhausted as I drive along the dark highway. Driving here seems endless. Sometimes I try to do the math in my head — how many days, hours or weeks have I spent here, alone, speeding along black roads under black skies? I am the only speck of light, and I move down well-worn paths like an electric pulse slips on a synapse.

I do lots of things to pass the time. I listen to music or podcasts. Sometimes I play karaoke YouTube videos on my phone via the Bluetooth in my car stereo, blasting out songs from Les Miserables, Disney movies, low-key songs in high keys, high-key songs in low key — my voice was never comfortable in the middle. I sing so much that by the time I walk in my front door at home, my throat is raw.

But it’s the moon that draws me these days. I always keep one eye on it. The drive is muscle memory now, to the point that it frightens me. I am terrified I am too comfortable with my 2 hour 10 minute round trip to work, and one day or night, I will crash my car in some stupid, easily avoidable manner. I blink and the landscape turns from the cold grey monotone of the city to the muted greens and browns of the countryside, like I’ve just lost a small section of my life. It’s like teleporting, and I become scrambled.

This anxiousness has been magnified by the fucking moon.

As the days and nights grow warmer, the skies seem to become clearer, and it draws my attention like a magnet, like an endless whisper — a gentle but persistent reminder that it’s seen thousands of years, trillions of humans. It makes me feel equal parts nothing and everything.

As it orbits, it pulls the ocean with it, tugging it back and forth. A mirror of humanity’s duplicity — everything from peace and conflict to the war in my mind between kindness and viciousness. Light and dark, good and evil.

It pulls and wanes, ebbs and flows, and I am powerless. We are powerless.