Three Hours

The highway stretched out flat.

The sky took up most of the view.

I drove for three hours

and the landscape didn't change.

Same flat land pressing down.

Same wide sky above.

A town appeared, I passed through it

in five minutes. It was gone.

I couldn't even remember the name.

The landscape erased me.

I was just a car moving through

a place that didn't care I was there.

The flatness was indifferent.

The sky was too big.

I was too small.

I could have stopped anywhere.

It wouldn't have mattered.

I could have never stopped at all.

The road kept going.

I kept going.

Nothing changed.

That's what it meant to drive through—

to be erased by the indifference

of all that space and sky.

To be nothing in a place

that needed nothing from me.