I miss driving long distances at night. Gunning for unreachable horizons, all the red and white lights shivering through dirty exhaust like ember dice tumbling toward loss. The gamble on riding in an anonymous herd of so many pistons and tiny explosions, countless people unfocused in the way that makes time move faster, everyone barreling away together, nobody there yet, all of us wanting to be. If only all the teeth grinding was in concert— recorded and compiled and played through obligatory headphones: it might remind us of frozen tree husks, bedroom doors, or the fact that every building is actually slowly falling down. I miss letting go of the wheel and the occasional flirtatious tongue-whisper from the back of my mind to suddenly jerk it ninety degrees in either direction. I’ve been in a pretty bad wreck before. I can still see it and feel it, the snapshots and the body slam. But I can’t hear it. Maybe you never actually hear the sounds of a terrible car crash you’re involved in. Maybe they get marred by the horror of it all: contorted metal screaming, contorted humans screaming, that octave jump of a shocked machine for a moment unmoved by its revving. Instead, you absorb the noise through the toughest parts of your body, like your ashen elbow skin and thick enamels. I clench my fists and it sings out of my knuckles, a song of being on the brink.