one a.m. and no sleep in sight, put on some shoes and pop, click, poof, light the cigarette, feet on the steps, feet on the concrete, in the car, windows down, rain waiting to fall. the night sits like a drunk waiting to pass out, just on the edge of something tragic and stunning, on weather, on rain, on humidity and cold air just on the other side of the mountain. push the car harder, faster, up the mountain, fifty feet in front of the star, ride it hard, settle into the seat and throw your thumb against the stereo knob, turn it up, up, up, let it rock the very frame, jitter against the speakers, visit the fillings in your teeth, let you forget who you were, are, will be. i drove home from work today, all four windows down, sunroof open, hair pulled back, so tired i'd hit the mental wall four hours beforehand and i was concentrating less on the traffic and more on the way a tendril of hair teased against that place below my ear where my neck becomes my shoulder and the way the right music can just fucking make it. the star was on during the day today. i don't know why, and i think i'm the only one that noticed. I drove up there tonight, another scene from another movie i think i've lived through five hundred times, 23 and alone, driving up the side of a mountain in his whiskeytown t-shirt because i feel like hell but i'm not quite ready to go home and put my head down with no one to settle their hand into my hair as i sleep and slip their leg in between mine. just not quite there. so westerberg and i went for a little drive, and i listened to We May Be the Ones a few too many times and thought that maybe he's right, but then again, i've learned not to put my life in the hands of any rock and roll band, they'll throw it all away, and I'm more enthralled these days with the heady white amber glow of the street lights and the way a railroad town doesn't look as dirty as it does when i was a kid, and how we all seem to have decided that the world should just sort of come to a screeching southern halt at night, when my brain is clicking and i'd rather go somewhere that isn't the waffle house or the goddamned walmart and the way my stomach won't quite settle this week and i have no idea why, but it reminds me slightly of being pregnant, which i'm not, but i don't really need to think about. all that from a fucking lyric and a streetlight. from the yellow lines and the way the black pavement goes a little blue beneath my headlights and i could have sworn the police car that passed me was weaving like a drunk driver and i miss my best boston friend so desperately because i just need to play these songs myself instead of hearing them for the first time all over again by someone else and i'm a little lost in being found and i'm a little happy by my sadness. i'm a little destroyed and i'm still trying to make plans, and its not a sign of weakness that i really need someone to just help me hold all of my pieces together lately, a little emotional duct tape and some hand holding go a million miles an hour in the right direction and i don't have anything to be torn up about except a million memories gone wrong and a place i love entirely destroyed. i always walk around waiting for the bottom to fall out. braced for the next hit. fully expecting someone, somewhere to blindside me. except when i'm moving. when i'm in motion, bombarded, windows down, ninety miles an hour, entirely in control, sound up, voice screaming, sensory overload from every single fucking direction. that, and when i fall asleep with his face in my neck, his arm underneath my head and the other hand resting against the edge of my pelvic bone. then. then i'm not waiting for anything. i'm already there. _We may well be the ones To set this world on its earWe may well be the onesIf not then why are we here Why the hell then are we here__I wanna knowI wanna know_