The car doesn’t move.
Time does—
thin, unhelpful.
Light holds on the windshield.
Engines idle.
A hand lifts in the next car,
then drops.
He sits inside this arrangement,
braided into lanes,
motionless.
The car in front moves
one foot, then two,
then stops.
Fifty years, or near enough.
The numbers have begun.
The temperature gauge nudges
to the right.
Taillights
stare at him.
There is no disentanglement.
It is a progressive
knotting into.
A car inches forward.
Another follows.
The line closes again
like water.
Somewhere ahead,
something moves,
or seems to.
He is the last dodo bird,
stumbling toward home,
footsteps—maybe—
behind him.
He won’t make it.
