Rush Hour

I love traffic jams
there is nothing better than sitting in dead stop traffic on the 101 freeway
during rush hour
I like playing that little game
where you try and see how many channels you can flip through
on the radio
before you find that perfect song
You know, because you got all your windows down
and you want the other cars around you to know that you got personality
but you're not a stereotype
(Sorry, Britney, you just don't help my image)
You got parked cars
stretching vast and powerless
like ideas
on the super highway of a woman's mind
You wanna ask her what she's thinking but instead she coughs exhaust
and tells you to just give her time
it's rush hour
Let her just breathe
and the road heaves
and eventually
one car makes it home
like one idea getting funneled
and strained through years of insecurity and self loathing
until it falls formlessly imperfect into your palm
fragile and probably already broken
but an idea nonetheless
just trying to find its way home
When I was younger traffic jams meant one thing in my family:
Car fights
Something about hours of uninterrupted stillness made us want to
rip each other's throats out
Like the tranquility on the road
needed to be compensated for by the unapologetic movement of violence
Passive asphalt meant aggressive clouds underneath your cheeks
swelling and boiling a dark purple
like God gave up on the sunset
just so he could laugh at your bruises
When normal kids called my family “excessively violent”
I blamed the traffic jams
A bunch of hyperactive geniuses in a hotbox of unspoken sentiments
Didn’t stand a chance next to the unforgiving tyranny of motionless concrete
Forcing us to voice all issues
Through clenched fists and shots to the skull
When the kids at school began to talk
It made the higher-ups in the district
Forced meeting after meeting of abuse prevention
On a group of people who just needed an outlet
Nobody understood that my family
Was, well, unbalanced,
But it was just an idea
Being funneled
and strained through years of insecurity and self loathing
Making its way through the dead stop traffic
Of noise and misunderstanding
just trying to find its way home