New Moon

The parking lot was nearly empty
Her car looked like a little child's toy way off in the far corner
As she trudged along she kept her eyes on the big orange sun
That was sinking toward a dark line of trees in the distance
She wondered how much lower and fatter it would be by the time she was on the road
About halfway there, she dropped her keys on the pavement next to a faded yellow stripe
She bent down to retrieve them and then suddenly froze
Arm outstretched, hand open
As an overpowering sense of deja vu washed through her
The setting sun, the purple sky, the early evening smell of baked asphalt
All of it had sometime, somewhere been exactly as it was this very moment
Then it was gone, she grabbed her keys and continued on her way

The car was hard to start as usual
It would like a little coaxing to make it turn over
Her gearhead brother-in-law had been working on it for her
And he wasn't one to sacrifice torque or horsepower for easy starts or other such petty concerns
But that was okay, because she loved to go fast
For her, the dashed lines on the freeway were like grains of sand slipping through an hour glass
Ticking away the seconds, the minutes, and the hours of her life
If she got home a few minutes early on any given afternoon it gave her a thrill
As if she had stolen a little something back from death
The motor came to life just as the tree line took its first nip at the sun
And without missing a beat she threw the car into gear and headed for the highway
The road stretched out in a thin black ribbon as straight and as far ahead as the eye could see
There was no traffic, so she pressed a little harder on the accelerator and began to pick up speed
It was that peculiar bit of twilight when the first faint stars become visible
Last night she had come this way and there had also been a sliver of a crescent moon
But right now it was nowhere to be seen
She didn't care though, she just wanted to go faster
She leaned into the steering wheel and mashed the gas pedal into the floor
The stripes on the highway began to unreel beneath her in a dizzying blur
As if all those grains of sand had lost their bearings and were falling all over each other
Just trying to get out of the way to make room for the next moment, or instant, or tick of the clock

And at that moment she saw the first glimmer of reflective paint, yellow and black
Wafting through the late summer heat rising off the roadway
And in the next instant she saw the barricade
A low, thick concrete wall behind the warning sign
And she tightened her grip on the steering wheel, pressed harder on the gas pedal
And fixed her stare straight ahead

And then everything went absolutely silent
And instead of a crash or a screech of tires or a scream
There was just one very loud tick of a clock
And then a crazy symphony of grinding bone and metal
Bent steering wheel wrists snapping like toothpicks
Broken legs flailing out at weird angles as she smashed through the windshield in an explosive shower of glass and blood
And then she was flying, falling, floating, sailing through the air
An impossible arc across the night sky
Until her momentum would carry her no further
And then she reached out
Wrapped her arms around the new moon
And disappeared beyond the horizon
While a thousand startled crows erupted and fled in every direction
From the cornfield that spread out below