Median

Sometimes when I open up my eyes I see the median, not as going up but going out, the landscape, snow perhaps. Each little light is there off in the distance, far away into the past. Blocks of white and blocks of black, split and freckled with a thousand stars. This is what I see when I wake up.

I used to pretend to sleep, coming home from dinner, that party across town. Seeing how long I could go, how old I would be, before my parents never carried me again. Seeing if somehow I could mew your false dream into a real one.

Cars are not the same anymore. Drives are not the same. Now I fall asleep and find the sleep is all too real. And after one eye opens, with the other close behind, I'll think about what it must be like to drive. Wondering if the driver sees this median the way I do. Wondering if he's thinking of turning, driving across that snow, and meeting those stars.