A set of dull headlights, hazy with age, shone out into the American road. The cracked paint lining the asphalt ran out ahead; like the days, the nights, the weeks, the months, shit, the years—he thought of that dreadful lyric “the years are falling by like the rain”.

Hyperbolic drivel.

Years didn’t pass by like the rain at all, because the rain fell in a shower; sure, some drops fell in succession, but they also fell simultaneously.

Years, on the other hand, were decidedly lacking in any kind of interesting multiplicity. We know that when this year ends, the next one will come. And isn’t that quaint? A harrowing parade of lost moments. Yesterdays are strewn with, littered with, discarded regret. And (for fun) consider success: a happy moment? Time takes it and wrings the life out of it, casting it down to become the putrid roadkill of the highway of our lives.

Still, he thought, the hills and curves came fast enough to keep him breathing—what’s around the bend or over the hill?

A cemetery crept into view as he peaked and descended the other side of the slope. “A little on the nose,” he swore back at the universe, cursing it for its blunt and boorish retort.

No matter what he did, a black cat called melancholy stalked him to the end.