I walk the same ruined mile every version of me ever bled on. The concrete remembers. The ghosts do roll call. My shadow shows up out of pity. What once had a pulse now rides shotgun in my ribs. Roadkill memories flattened thin as old Polaroids. I keep them anyway. I don’t know how to drop the dead. Everyone swears the city sleeps. It doesn’t. It just watches from dark windows waiting to see if I fall the way I’ve watched others fall. Truth is, I already did. I just learned how to fall forward. I walk alone, sure. But alone isn’t empty. It’s a chamber where echoes smuggle back everything I lost and whisper the names I tried to bury under better intentions. I keep moving. Not because the road loves me or because I expect a sunrise. I walk because stopping would mean admitting I’m just another body on the shoulder of a highway that never cared who it killed. And I’m not giving the asphalt that satisfaction.
