I drive twenty-two miles per hour down a road of twenty-five
Keeping it at a slow and steady twenty-two
Holding my pace and carefully eyeing the speedometer
As I roll through a deserted college town
A college from which I had just graduated days before the world got sick
And we had to put it all on pause
I coast, absentminded yet somehow fully present, through a frozen timeline
Twenty-two miles per hour
A gauge on a speedometer
A single notch which in that moment
Indicated to me this:
Out of one hundred and sixty possible miles per hour
I was here, at twenty-two
A slow and smooth twenty-two
And isn’t there so much ahead?
And if the speedometer were a timeline of my life
Then out of some unknown variable
Perhaps seventy? Ninety even?
I was here at twenty-two
A young and daring twenty-two
And after twenty-two
Isn’t there so much ahead?