Your restlessness.
My recklessness.
Stormy nights and mountain drives?

Perfect.

We trade questions about our quirks,
I tease your serial forgetfulness.
Thunder shakes the car,
our laughter is stronger.

A sputtering soon joins us.

Is it the transmission?
Maybe the engine?
It’s a poorly timed joke
halfway up any mountain.

We can’t stop now.

You chuckle.
One hand tightly clutches the stick shift,
the other grips the wheel.
I sense your worry
as we travel the line
between danger and death.

Our adventure meets an unexpected end
in a valley filled with temples and dead men.

Please,
don’t apologize while you call your friend
to rescue us from our failed attempt
to combat your loneliness.

Silence,
punctuated by hardened rain,
reveals the source of your dilemma:

A battle between the guilt of joy
and the burden of surviving.