Violin Nerves

Before me the road was winding and slim, a bare-shouldered model with sharp angles and steep sides. A tease, but a sad tease: ashy like the sky, and mute. I hated it, but we had common ground, so I followed it anyway.
No softly humming mosquitoes, dancing in pyres over tall slough grasses, no stirring breeze brushing teasing lips against my skin, and I cannot see the wildflowers that grow along the edge of the dyke, or hear that particular bird chirp I especially love that sing-songs from someplace unseen. None of these things that I so loved and pined for were awake this day. I hummed, for it was something amid the emptiness of the sullen day, but it brightened nothing.
What scared me the most was losing control and destroying everything. My precious cargo was jumping ship, and I was too busy shoveling water to save myself. I don’t feel safe here. Here is my body, and here is my left and my right, and one has no control and the other is losing it.
Keep driving. This is what I told myself, for if I stopped I might crash and burn (and fail), but it seemed I was crashing and burning already. I thought I wanted to feel numbed, but I hated to be sedated, and I thought I needed to feel alive, but stepping out frightened me.
Although I was entirely alone, there were projections that were with me (I would not let go of them), and I poured myself into them as a river empties herself into the ocean. I lived in my cars, dreaming and wondering at the images outside but never rolling down the windows.
But don’t let go of the wheel!
Ahead the road curves in opposing directions, and straight there is the dyke, with murky water lapping at its hem. The strings burst out in fervent dissonance once more, a time bomb exploding, a reacting airbag, then fall silent as they sink to depths where sound waves cannot travel.


Oh Jane Doe
She ain’t coming home.
Way out there in the deep blue sea
Sometimes I hear her voice on the breeze
Oh Jane Doe
She ain’t coming home.
Went down to the beach one night
Morning came, she was gone with the tide
Oh Jane Doe
She ain’t coming home.
She went where the light can’t shine
Traded air for bubbles and brine
Oh Jane Doe
She ain’t coming home.
She ain’t coming home.