Parked

I sit.

Alone in the deepening gloom, I stare at murky river water only occasionally disturbed, watching the spreading ripples made by fish or bugs or falling leaves. It's too cold to get out and walk, so I am parked. I sit in a quiet car, the radio long since silenced, and I'm alone with my thoughts, with my reality.

My parking space is in front of the only part of the waterline that isn't blocked by trees or walls or guardrails. I think of stepping on the gas; of the one thing that will let me avoid going home. I laugh at how ridiculously adolescent I sound, even in my own head.

I think of the commitment skipped so I can be alone with these thoughts. No one knows where I am. I like that. I am lost to the world, with no one sparing a single thought for me. The solitude wraps around me like a blanket; it comforts me. I wish it were easier to find this place, this lovely "alone."

In this place where I'm parked, I am quiet. Peaceful. I am also turbulent, my thoughts full of problems, racing through my mind like water through rapids, mercilessly crashing into the rock of my brain. But here, no one asks me questions; I only question myself. No one makes demands of me; I simply demand my own, elusive perfection. No one has expectations of me; I expect nothing of myself, for that's what I've become used to getting.

I am here. Still for a moment, whirling for another. Outside, the world goes on. The wind whips around me. Geese honk, ducks quack, frogs croak, cars whiz by on the main road. But in here, I am, as always,

Parked.