chasing the pastels of deep sunset down the highway tonight, i felt the world turning under my tires. i felt the sky close it's eyes and breathe, watched it exhale the last remnants of the day in the soft mist of this early september half-rain, and when the fog over my windshield blurred the headlights in the oncoming lane i closed my eyes for four and a half seconds, just long enough to feel like i could die, right there, brains to glass to steaming, first-dark blacktop. when i opened them up again, the clouds were the most amazing shade of purple...the sky is a beaten woman in it's most gorgeous moments, the perfect shade of bruise against the mountains it's almost a sin for the earth to keep turning and take it away from us.

i remember the first time i got punched in the face, i just stood in front of the bathroom mirror for hours, watching the skin over my cheekbone swell up and bloat like floating roadkill. i watched the transition of my color go from peach to angry, bitter red to perfect pink-ringed magnolia purple. when i touched it, the pain was crazy and i remember the tears welling up and falling without my even wanting them to - they were just there, floating under my battery waiting for an excuse to swim up and fly away. the pain was crazy, but in this crazy, nuthouse way i was proud of it. angry and fucked up as i was, i was proud that the ugliness of my fathers fists had bloomed into this terrifying beauty that i didnt understand and i'd be able to look him in the face and say, with defiance in my eyes 'yeah, you fucked me up you sick freak, but look. im a god damn flower-garden, bitch.'

it's crazy and probably a little more than unhealthy, but when the sunset is that color, when the clouds are angry as a fresh blast to the face, trimmed in fuscia with the gray crawling up on all sides i always think of that day. and not just of me, of every kid who ever got beat, every bitch that ever got slapped around by her drunk-ass backwoods fucking redneck baby-daddy and looked at herself in the mirror, crying over smudged covergirl and hating how ugly her life is. how ugly her face is. i always think 'we might be ugly, but we're only as ugly as the sky.'

it's hard to hate your life when you feel so immense, when you can feel yourself wrapping around the fibers holding the planet together. when your cigarette smoke tastes like atmosphere and ninety-five miles an hour is riding you away from your life ahead of the streetlights ticking on, it's hard not to feel untouchable, not to close your eyes and let go of the steering wheel, just to see if god really has a plan that involves your face splattered all over the turnpike.

blasting down the highway, watching the lights of my tiny new city flicker on and star-burst after-dark into a habitable, safe place, i watched the last light crawl back behind the ring of the mountains and i said to myself,
this is me.

this is okay.