what a drive can do.

when you stay up until three o'clock in the morning worrying about what the hell you're supposed to do with the rest of your life (even though your mother reminds you you're only eighteen and aren't supposed to know by now (but you are) and you still have time to figure things out (but you don't)) and then you're only given more reason to worry about everything that's going on around you and there's nothing you can do to save yourself or anyone or change anything, for that matter, that's when you pull a still-soaked rug up from the basement, throw it in the backyard, grab your keys and go, just go, perhaps to survey the damage in your town or perhaps to see if the library has become a little less crazy or perhaps just to get out, to avoid any reason to stop, to find yourself merging onto the highway with no clear direction save your want to avoid stop signs and traffic lights and keep that speedometer climbing so you have to worry about nothing else but avoiding the cops. and when you find yourself driving by your high school, then coming so close to just walking into that airport or going further south until you get lost, and after you double back to find the other highway that can get you home, and when you roll those windows down and blast that music until you think you'll go deaf (the only reason the top stays up is because you don't want to be sunburned in march), and when you notice you've been driving aimlessly for an hour and somehow manage to feel somewhat better, but still not completely okay, then the only saving grace in your world (where you are, right now, because god knows there's only one thing in this world that can truly save you when you feel like losing it all and bursting into tears), the one thing that can bring you back to some semblance of reality and happiness is that sign that's nailed to a tree that you forget about every year until you drive past it again, that sign with a countdown (and you know all about those), the countdown that reminds you there's only one day left until spring begins.