I get scared every time I think of the society. I can’t help but notice how random it can be, and how bad it can become. There isn’t often signs to tell me what would really happen, not even a vague sense of it, that most of the time, I can walk the same route I’ve taken every day and still feel a bit lost.

My professor warns us of how harsh the world is. Like a lottery ticket, not what everyone gets is remotely a good one. We need to be prepared, they say. And so they become the very people they warn us about.

Isn’t it a bit ironic how they try to build people by breaking them down? I can see how great things have once been another thing, and how even greater things came from the ashes. But right now, all it’s making me see is how I can’t survive this mess they call reality. To be completely honest, it does suffocate me to think of.

Walking past buildings and houses, I keep on thinking and reimagining the days that lay ahead of me as if the past hasn’t already haunted me a few thoughts ago. It’s like a cycle I go through every day with each step my feet make. And it’s not something that I can help either.

It’s just that nothing ever felt certain. And more often than not, I’ve found myself in situations that made my footsteps feel like too much, feel like my breathing and a beating heart are too much.

Then I hear the distinct rumble of your engine. I look right ahead instead of the concrete walk, and I see you leaning on that old Cadillac of yours with your messy hair and glasses. You stand with hands jammed in the pockets of your jacket, looking a little lost yourself. But you have that smile of yours, the one that never goes away. And after all, it’s the one thing I know that I will always see.

You see me coming, and you stand in the path to meet me. “Let’s go,” you tell me.

We ride through town under the sky that’s a quickly fading shade of blue. The sun’s somewhere we don’t know about as I feel the momentum of the car take us some place else.

We pass by sleeping houses and all their subtle noises. I hear the soft voice of the night-time program blaring off in someone’s home. In another, they are preparing a feast perhaps when I hear the cheers and the small chatter. But we ride in silence with only the music coming off of your radio.

I push my hand out through the window and let my palms sift through the air. I feel the wind on my skin and all the silent words we aren’t saying. It’s as if we are leaving so many things behind with all the passing buildings and the strangers who live in them that we are putting ourselves to rest.

I think of it now and I think being a little lost sometimes is okay. It gets us places where none of those things even matter, and perhaps even for a few moments we can be someone different. Someone that at least you and I can see.

We reach the mountains that border the city when the skies gave way to a blanket of stars. Out in the distance is the city we left, sitting like a strange mirror with a billion stars for itself. The music it makes is just whisper like the crackling fire we’ve set up behind us, or like a distant memory we’ve tried to forget. Because right now, we are nowhere and somewhere at the same time.

You keep the music on on your radio. I feel your hand reach for mine, then you pull me gently towards you. We move our feet in the way the notes give way to each other, slowly and in circles. I chuckle and you smile your perfect little smile, and I feel like the world collapses around us.

Dancing in the dark, with only the light of the fire, it feels like it’s just you and me. My fingers are wrapped around yours and somehow my face finds the crook in your shoulder. Of all the things that can fit the puzzle that is my mind, I find you.

I wish it’s always like this. Everything is so simple and clear that I can feel my whirring mind settle in its place. And all I can think of is the two us at the edge of the world, where we refuse to acknowledge that that world even exists.

In a few short hours, we’ll have to come back to that. But at least for now, we’re somewhere else entirely.