Traffic lights hung on span cables, illuminating the snowy blacktop,
glistening like the frozen lake, like the starry sky.
The twinkles in the black sky that were in fact not stars, but airplanes,
on a cold and lonely February night.
She looked out the window of the passenger seat, feeling the freezing wind on her hand. The cold clung to it like metal, her copper nails reflected in the streetlamps, and her knuckles protruded like antennas from the thinness of her fingers. The heat thawed her feet underneath the worn in black leather boots.
The sounds of a freight train rumbled in the near distance as she stared attentively at his bare hands carelessly on the steering wheel. In a flash there was a big bright light and a jolt of the vehicle. The train horn screaming at the two of them. The car now stood still on a side street in silence for a minute, until the train had faded into the thick black smog in the distance.
The radio was playing at one notch, but it was now so silent it was invasive to the man and he turned it off. He tried to calm his breathing. Stop the pounding in his chest. He just watched his life almost disappear a foot behind him. Blown away with the train. Crushed to pieces. That could've been him. He was almost 30. That was almost him. Squashed like road kill. Like the rats he drove over regularly in the alleyway.
He turned his head to see that the girl was looking at him. Her eyes flickered like TV static and they had not moved once, not during the red light, nor during the near collision, and especially not now. She seemed abnormally calm to him. He wondered if this was not the first time she had been through something like this.
He studied the angular nature of her face and body. Her jaw was strong and her neck was long, and it lead to her collar bones that strung out like cables. Her breasts were small and precise, and pointed out with sharp, straight edges in a way that suggested they were created by design. He moved his hands towards her waist, feeling the mechanical texture of each of her ribs.
He had told her once how much he loved her ribs.
How easily he could grab them, and her thick black hair, how he could run his fingers through it, like detangling a bundle of electrical cords.
His warmth radiated within her, sending waves of shock down her spine. His humanity plugged her into a current of electricity. An eternal current of passion, of desire, of life.
Finally he looked at her in her eyes.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I'm fine"
"Are you?"
She for the first time that night began to feel afraid. She feared that this would be the last time she would feel the things that he allowed her to feel. The question she tried so hard not to ask presented itself.
Would she ever be enough?
"I don't know..."
"I don't think I can do this."
"I don't want to hurt you"
"You know there are things that I want out of life."
"Things you can't give me."
She let go of his hand for one last time, and thought about all that she had given up before, and what he couldn't give up for her. And how naive she was for hoping anyone ever would.
She stepped out of of the car onto the snow covered ground, glistening now like the tears in her soft static eyes. And she walked away, looking for a place to call home.