muscle memory

The moon is nearly full.

I know this, not because I can see it, hoping to catch a side-long winking glance in the 1 AM sky from the rear view mirror, but rather because I am due to start my period in the next couple days. The moon and I are linked; she and I wax and wane like two long time girlfriends, synced in their tides.

Tonight, there are remnants of storm clouds: ragged banners left in the front yard of some celestial bachelor party. And I can't see her, the moon, and I miss her quiet silver company along the road. But there are other sources of light to guide my eyes and tires on the pavement – modern spindly creatures, hunched like sentinels, dim orange heads ever watchful.

And my feet have fallen into a familiar pattern upon the gas pedal, my hands turn automatically, and my pensive brain wakes to make the realization that I am in an old neighborhood, a place of memories: the smell of cut grass, the taste of fresh lemonade, the scrape of chalk on the driveway, bright powder on my hands: it is a place of childhood.

Left on this street, right on that one, come to a pause at the stop sign, marvel at the great live oak in the yard across the way, and turn into the cul-de-sac; still on autopilot, running a path burned into my internal navigation system a decade ago, I park in front of my house, and turn off the headlights.

It is a struggle to stop myself from unbuckling. It is a battle to stay in the car, and not go traipsing through the backyard to find the garden key under a stone, and go in through the porch door. Because this is no longer my house. Those bushes are new, the front door is a different shade of green, and there's a different car in the driveway. Complete strangers live here now, in my living room and kitchen, and I am completely unaware of their existence –
that is, until I start thinking too much late at night and end up back here again.

This course of travel is useless, and serves me no purpose, other than to feed a growing sense of nostalgia as the years slip by. And I cannot simply delete it out of my brain, nor the muscle memory from my body.

Haunted by empty roads, I put the car in reverse and find the way back to my home in this time period, still looking for the moon that has been there for me always.