Michael and I are soul searching, physically searching with a car through America, but it isn’t going the way we planned, since everything is too expensive, so tonight we talk and we turn the car towards home, because this was not the trip it was supposed to be, because we didn’t find the answer to our fates, and now I pause, because there’s a thunk, and because the car bumps like we’re rolling over something, so we slow to discover that something, and there’s a body behind us, so I look at Michael and his terror, and I shout at him to keep moving and that we can’t really see what happened, and we move, because he listened, and we pretend, because we don’t want to confirm what happened.

***

Michael is here, at my request. It’s been five months and fourteen days. I am trying to tell him that the scene replays in my head, but he cuts me off. He tells me to be quiet and that nothing is wrong.

But we know I’m a little weird now. He knows that I started to smoke more weed and that I stopped driving cars. Maybe he’s notice that I’m a quieter, a little more in my head.

Small things trigger my memory and the terror. I tell Michael that I might have PTSD, but he doesn’t want to hear it. He tells me to smoke less. I’m smoking more.