I.

Years ago—when I was still young enough to be half girl, half creature—my father would carry me out into the darkness, night after night. He sat me behind him (in the backseat). The vessel (2000 Honda Accord) was warm. He spun the globe (steering wheel) and pulled out of the station (garage).

The engine hummed. The asphalt bumped and jolted below. He never said a word. He let the quiet rhythm envelop the neighborhood, a microcosm, a single child. We traveled in loops (at a rapid five miles per hour), and the outside looped around us just the same. The trees—those ancient pines—cast long shadows of past lives and seasons lived. The same sleepy houses rolled by with every circle. There was that one house with the lovely blue shutters. The other house with the tree out front that bloomed wine-red. 

Back then, even the moon must have been able to fit inside the rearview mirror. The stars must have interlaced and speckled my hair—a new kind of night sky, tangible enough to thread my fingers through, to be braided and woven. Their light ebbed across my cheeks as the night waned and spun, and I watched and felt and wondered and drifted somewhere toward that space between the sky and land (optimal for dreams).

It was the only way you would fall asleep, my father later said. No bedtime stories, no soft lullabies, no gentle rocking, just an abhorrent amount of gas burned per week. For 15 minutes each night, we made countless trips around this little world. I was probably thinking, but I don’t know what I was thinking about. I knew everything and nothing at this infinite point in time, least of all my own self (a thing of flesh? of sleep?).

Here I was, unknown to myself and the world. Here I was, amorphous yet absolute. Here I was, being and being and being. 

II.

Lifetimes later—or some months ago—I am no longer in the car. The wheels (there are more now) shake for a moment on the tracks, rocking the limbs of the train and all the bodies inside. I do not know who the driver is. I do not recognize the trees outside. I do not see the houses. It is colder. It is so, so much colder. 

Ruggles! Next station, Ruggles!

I jolt myself out of a momentary (eternal) stupor, fixing my eyes forward past the seats (there are also more of these now). Massachusetts materializes around me, somewhere between Providence and Boston. Voices float and dissipate through the air—a louder hum coupled with the periodic clang of metal on rail. I shove my earbuds in. 

I am not in that car anymore, but then suddenly I am again, slowly fading in and out of slumber, the shapes of the houses more or less reminiscent of the old. I stare out the window and think and remember. This time, I can recall everything. 

I think about that fold in the universe where my high school life lies, tucked away yet still in reach, like that box of sweets you purposefully hide somewhere high but then use a ladder anyway to indulge yourself (because there is some destructive pleasure in reopening old wounds just to feel them again). The noise of it all echoes in my head, in hallways, in classrooms, in courtyards. When did the world get so loud? When did the world become so suffocating? It was something gradual—a cosmic tide slowly rising and lapping at the shore. The stars fell out of my hair when I ripped the strands out. I think about the universe fading, then expanding, then fading again. I think about escaping, grasping for any road forward and any vehicle to take me there (anywhere). I think about the idea of Boston and New England colleges, the quiet desire to envision a life anew, a separate world from the one that had grown around me. I think about that desperate hope—maybe because a future me had foretold my arrival and my body already knew on its own.

The Boston skyline blurs past the window; high school me is dead. The city streets run parallel to the tracks as I reach for another old memory. I begin counting cars. Four intertwined rings: an Audi. An italic H: a Hyundai. A cluster of stars: a Subaru.

III.

Sometime between now and before, I am awake. Dad is driving again, talking now, and I am both old and young enough to hear him from the backseat. He says, Do you see that truck? Yeah, I do. I’d like one someday, probably another Honda model. With that uppercase H logo? Mm. That truck is a new build. Do you know which brand? Well, that’s easy! The symbol literally says Ford. And that one? Chevrolet. And there? Lexus. There’s a Toyota behind it, and another Toyota. I don’t like those. Makes you feel like you’re driving a boat. How? It just does. You’ll know when you start driving too. I want to sleep. I don’t ever want to drive.

IV. 

Centuries, decades, weeks, minutes ago—or now—I don’t know where I am. The car is different this time; the touchscreen glows pale white in the darkness. Ba (because that was his name after all) is silent, and the night roars by outside. We are on the way home. There are lives and lands all below me now (Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut), and I feel ancient. I am 19, but I have been 19 for so many years (but also too few increments of time). The loop has been so much longer this time around: more seasons passed, more trains ridden. I feel my life expand and compress around me, descending and dreaming and flashing, one moment a girl fully-formed watching plain trees on a highway and another moment a creature still burgeoning with wonderment on how the universe mirrors itself. Why is it that high school feels like lifetimes ago, and those silent night drives of yesterday and today feel endless, as if I never truly woke up?

I am perpetually travelling through time, and time is travelling through me. The stars pull at my hair tonight as well, lulling me to sleep. I let my eyes shut. The window feels cold against my cheek.