TRAVELLING

Lying in the back seat, all bunched up because you’re too big for the space.

Bags or jacket or jumper rolled up under your head, because the moulded plastic of the door is an intolerant pressure on your skull, and your sock-clad feet nudged up against the window crank of the other door, shoes had been toed off into the footwell hours ago.

Half asleep, the figures in the front seats look too-large and their voices are mumurs that you don’t bother to sharpen, don’t try to decipher because they’re soothing, like white noise or the sound of waves.

You couldn’t sleep before, because the swinging white-blue glare of headlights had washed through the car, intermittent and random, it wasn’t constant enough to ignore.

But then it turns dark and you’re the only car on the twisty back roads, the only car in the middle of empty space with the stars visible through the window above you, only occasionally blacked out by the ruffled silhouettes of trees.

Then there are street lamps again - orange pulses of light that come and go, and come and go, and come and soon you’re falling asleep.

You’ll wake up with pins and needles, and air freshener mouth and your neck will hurt and everything will be too bright and the voices will be too fucking loud that tell you ‘wake up! we’re home.’

You’ll unroll your aching body from the back seat, young bones protesting like a strange biological prophecy, and rub the sleep shit from your eyes, scowling at the vague blurry shapes with their relieved cheer.

But it really doesn’t matter.

You’re home, the journey is over and, yes okay, they’re right - you’re home.