The Familiar Made Strange

I buckled in this morning

and the click sounded wrong.

Not loud wrong.

Just... different.

Like a stranger's voice

saying your name.

The same car.

The same seatbelt.

Probably the same mechanism.

But today it sounded

like a question,

like it wasn't sure

I was supposed to be here.

The red safety light

blinked on the dash,

small and insistent,

the way it always does,

except today it felt

like an accusation,

like it was saying,

You've been driving this car

for how long and you're just now

noticing

that the click is wrong?

I sat there for a minute

before I started driving,

just listening to the silence,

to the ambient hum

of the engine,

the sound of my own breathing,

trying to figure out

when the familiar

had become uncanny,

when the ordinary

had turned strange.

The seatbelt held fine.

The car drove fine.

Everything was fine.

But the click stayed with me,

that small wrong sound,

a reminder that nothing

is as settled as you think,

that even the things

you touch every day,

the things that keep you safe,

can surprise you,

can become foreign,

can remind you

that you don't know them

as well as you thought.