The road unravels before me, a blackened serpent shedding its skin,
split and stitched with tar like scars that never quite heal beneath
the weight of passing wheels and wandering feet. It stretches—taut,
then slack—a frayed rope pulled taut by unseen hands, threadbare
where the earth remembers how to swallow what was paved over,
how to crack the illusion of permanence.
This is how the land breathes: in jagged sighs, in slow rebellion, lifting its ribs
against the asphalt’s grip, pushing up dandelions through the fractures,
golden defiance in the seams of control. I walk its length like a pilgrim tracing
the spine of some fallen beast, feeling the pulse of trucks shudder through
concrete, hearing the hum of engines like distant thunder, a storm that never
breaks, but never leaves.
And yet, at dusk, when the streetlights flicker on, the road becomes a river
of liquid shadow, swallowing the day’s heat, its wounds softened
by the forgiving dark—until dawn comes again with its unrelenting light,
its merciless clarity.
We are all fraying, aren’t we? Wearing thin at the edges,
split by the weight of going, mended haphazardly,
still holding, still holding. Like frayed ropes of cargo.
