“And I can’t be holding on,
To what you got,
When all you got is hurt.”

He listened to Bono play over the Radio. It was a daily ritual, to listen to the radio while he drove from work. He didn’t like when he was alone with his thoughts. He thought them to be too dangerous for his own well-being. But somehow, today, he couldn’t let go of the lines. There was something about them, something which reminded him of a distant memory, but he couldn’t recollect. He needed a smoke real bad.

He parked his car on the sideway, right in front of the NO STOPPING ON FREEWAY sign, cursing his stubbornness in refusing to buy lighters. He thought the persons who used them were show pony, and, well, that sound that you get when you light up a match. Oh my! Listening to the crisp sound of the head against the rough surface and the fire which resulted in the innocuous act always gave him a certain satisfaction. He parted his lips to kiss the cigarette and took a long drag. The kind you take when you feel a little anxious. Or a little nervous. Or a little hyper. You get the gist.

The first train of thoughts hit him as soon as he is done exhaling the first drag. He cannot decipher the meaning, but he feels he is getting there. But the thing with thoughts is they never travel the direction you want them to, they took him to the teachings of one Jim Morrison whom he loved and admired. What a talent, he thought. A poet, a philosopher. Would have been good friends, they, he mused as he neared the end of the smoke. “Damnit ! what the fuck was I thinking of stopping in the middle of this highway”, he thought. He held the butt of one to light up another cigarette, the weather was just adorable at the time. His affection with the weather was somewhat recent. He tried to figure out when did he actually started listening to the language of nature.

It was shady at best, but he could connect the dots now. A sense of dread, a sense of loss. This was accompanied by the flashed of happiness and feelings. He couldn’t remember why- he knew he was missing something! “Can you bury something so deep in your mind that you cannot, for the love of it, remember what it was? Can a memory be so powerful that your mind decides that you would be better off it? If it does, where does the conscience lie? Are you the same person as before? Or something has been changing inside you, and you don’t know. Where the fuck do you go when the tears dry up, where do you run to when you are running from yourself? Where does it finally stop?”

The screeching tires of the truck ahead brought him back to reality. The bursting glass of his car reminded him of what he had lost. The painful scream rang his ears once again and he laughed. He was going to her.

P.S : This is, in yours truly’s imagination, the story of boy years after the car crash in the song, The Last Kiss, by Pearl Jam.