In a Ship In a Bottle

My favorite part of the highway are the different "over-sized load"s that come my way. I can usually never tell what they belong to. I thought about Native American tribes and if they were to still migrate as they used to, in this day and age, perhaps they would construct tepees on flatbed 18-wheelers and migrate that way. What a sight to see.

At night, I've been driving over ten hours straight. In the final stretch my mind blanks and I see things. I wouldn't call it sensory deprivation and yet I'm just sitting here and everything is moving around me. In my rear view mirror my string of pine cones appear very much to be the heads of passengers since it's too dark to make out any features. I suppose I'm not alone.

And against the night sky are plumes jutting out from man-made volcanoes. The uppermost wisps take forms, like ducks, before dissipating. The plumes alternate colors from shades of blue to red against a deep blue sky that appears to be just as shallow, like a layer of paint on a wall. I leave this quickly.

I see the shadow of a front bumper, the sort you see on police cars. It is a normal white car pretty dirty with a sticker of a stag on the rear. I know that some old police cars get auctioned off and I see no extra attached mirror, so I don't know what to make of it for sure. Checking out the license plate for the state it's from, it says "EXEMPT." 'There's no state called "exempt,"' I think to myself. 'What kind of state is called exempt? What sort of business do they do there?' And I look at the bottom and see "Wyoming." They should really put the state name where it usually is. I didn't know if they would have jurisdiction in Colorado so I kept my nose clean.

I feel like a ship suspended on a bottle. I don't know what emotions go with that - probably some anxiety, longing, detachment from reality. College is about leaving, constantly dropping situations (classes, vacations, schools). I need something steady. It's getting really hard to keep leaving.