old school too

friday night

The road was covered in empty footprints. Oil stains lay where once were great adventures, now all lost to the bustle of progress. Funny how easy it is to forget in the fave of invention, of novelty. My hand fit perfectly inside one of the oil stains and its gritty slickness clung to my flesh like the feel of your skin. It's scary to be so alone amongst so much, so many. It's scary to be alone at all.

Do I become swept away? Do I let myself be carried away by the tides? Or do I too become forgotten like the long-ago expeditions that brought about their own demise with their motivations? Am I forgotten amidst all the others? All the rest? Do I rest? Do I sleep? If I sleep, I will dream. I lost myself to my dreams once. I lost myself to the tides, to the ever encroaching tidal wave of progress. Of convention. Of what I thought my dreams were.

I still feel the scratching caress of the oil slick. Will I feel anything else underneath it, the pale whispers of the pale passing souls who shriek and wail for remembrance but cannot cling to the life they once, if ever, had? These souls, these were once people, once vibrant, now shadows, paltry imitations of what it is to be human. They walk all around me, arching in circles and squares, glimmering in and out like heat mirages, and they function. But are they happy? Will they find joy? Their ultimate purpose? They claim life, but they cannot show for it. Nothing but the insignificance of meager replacements for their weary, perforated hearts. That is emptiness in a sea full of material wealth. That is substitution for love.