you said stop signs were optional so long as a white ribbon was wound around the octagon but i suppose they're blood red for a reason you can only wave away the same warning for so long and i remember so many nights that i ducked, blinking, into your car on the way home from some strangers house a party or a bar i remember so many nights how you strangled that same bottle against the steering wheel and i wonder what you thought of when your head was so unclear and now all that i can recall is exactly how it feels to flip headlong into an ancient oak and shatter through a damp windshield the sound of the stereo fading into silence as i watched your white eyes widen for the terror at the sight of such ignorant violence we were children, though, weren't we? children well equipped for a dangerous game risking the listings of everyone we knew not caring enough to spare them the phone calls the sound of our names and data on the news some fatal intersection they'll have said where a stoplight could have caught us and i wonder if they'll ever remember that their grief will layer innocence upon what, in life, they thought of us upon the canvas of our history will they never gather that we recognized that reflective white that what it meant was not a mystery will they put two and two together and come out even with the fact that we had places to go places to go tonight you know what goes on the corner of mad river road around that tree every year this night no more curling steel simply a ribbon of white
