Stopped at the Station

2 AM and the fluorescent lights

are too bright for this hour,

too bright for someone who's forgotten

why they left in the first place.

I pulled off the highway

because my eyes wouldn't stay open,

because I didn't know

how far I still had to go,

because the road behind me

looked the same as the road ahead.

Now I'm sitting in my car,

watching the empty station,

watching the pump closest to me

stand like a monument

to nowhere,

like the only real thing

in a landscape of fluorescent nothing.

My shadow is sharp on the ground,

cast by lights that have no use for darkness,

cast by lights that make everything

clear and terrible.

Beyond the station,

the road I came from disappears

into actual dark.

I don't know why I left.

I don't know where I'm going.

I don't know if I can keep driving

or if I should just sit here

under these lights

until something makes sense,

until the fluorescence

explains itself,

until the dark beyond the station

becomes something I can move toward

without knowing why.