how to be human

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Sunday morning, and the roads never had a chance to be silent.

Day breaks, light climbing the walls as someone has their first taste of oxygen and someone has their last and the rest keep living in the in between.

They’re waking up slowly, sheets twisted, sun on the ceiling and the floor and the four straight walls. Some of them, reaching for alarms and tired screens, feel like a half-alive creature sitting quietly in its cage.

They try to break the feeling, opening doors and pulling back curtains and listening to the coffee maker hum as they wonder if today they’ll find a way to climb the walls and escape.

Outside, it rains. Car doors slam and hands tangle in wet hair and umbrellas fold crookedly in the dashboard. Another cage. Some of them mutter to themselves. Some are silent.

Windshield wipers settle into a familiar rhythm, swishing across the glass, sending raindrops flying into open air. The yellow lines of the road are bright against the darkness of the wet asphalt.

Do they all feel like the same trapped creature, squinting through the rain with too many eyes, thinking they’re the only thing in the world that doesn’t know how to be human?

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