Brake Light Bloom

Red lights bloom ahead, a pulsing

garden of stop. My engine idles,

a low hum against the silence

of the radio. Stuck here.

Just for a moment, the world

outside the glass dissolves.

And then it comes, that thing I pushed

down, that ugly, barbed-wire memory.

It always finds me, when I’m still.

Headlights behind, distorted

in the wet street, like tears stretching

out a face. My hands grip the wheel.

No escape, not from this.

Not from this quiet hum of wrong.