I can never get you out of my mind.

The roads here wind in ways that I don't expect. 

Sometimes, I think that dashed yellow line is the only thing that keeps me moving the right way. That keeps me going. Because one wrong move could send me barreling off the highway and the freefall feeling that would come next is not something I'm unfamiliar with. It's the same thing that happens every time I think of you. I can't get over how much this place reminds me of you. I can't get over how little room there is between full-fledged fear and being in love. 

Sometimes, I think maybe they're the same thing.

I don't know what keeps bringing me back here. But I find myself coming here more and more when I can't sleep. When I can't stop thinking about you. I drive the same familiar routes. Thinking the same familiar thoughts. Going to the same familiar places. I keep retracing the paths we used to take, thinking that if I follow them back far enough, I'll figure out where we went wrong. The absence of you is familiar. Almost comforting. It's the routines that always get me the most, because when I stray too far away, I start to lose my grasp on you. I've done this before. I'm not willing to do it again.

Sometimes you're almost completely gone from my memory.

Not from the lack of trying to keep you there, but just because time makes you harder to hold on to everyday. But lately, I've been letting my mind wander far too often between imagination and reality. So that when I wake up alone along the lakefront, curled up in the cramped backseat of my tiny car, I notice just how empty I am inside without you. I notice how my heart is wherever you are even when I don't know exactly where that is. There aren't enough words to explain just how black it looks on the horizon of the water at night, but it momentarily makes all of this a little easier to bear. Because if the sun can come up everyday and make that endless darkness go away, then maybe I'll get my second chance too.

Until then, one thing is for certain, I can never get you out of my mind.

All I have are sleepless nights that I spend walking those paths that outline the shore, wishing I was spending the summer on your coastline instead of mine. The sidewalk here is cracked. I can see the gaps from where the concrete used to meet—from where it used to fit together perfectly. This reminds me of you. It's not an exact metaphor, but I see you in the oddest of places. Maybe because you've always been everywhere for me. For a moment, I feel like I belong here. But I don't since I've never felt right anywhere without you.

The roads here are longer than I remember, but not long enough to keep me away from you.