I woke up in a desert motel with a ceiling fan spinning like a drunken philosopher—full of motion, lacking direction, preaching nothing really. Outside, the sky was an obnoxious shade of blue, the kind that seems engineered in a lab by interns who drink too much kombucha and claim to “practice mindfulness between email threads.”
The world was too awake for me.
I threw my bags in the back seat of the car, that faithful tin can of bad decisions, and followed the road until it stopped pretending to be straight. Birds started tailing me about twenty miles in—sleek, black, self-appointed detectives of the sky. They circled with the authoritative air of creatures who know they evolved better than we did.
I yelled out the window,
“I quit my job—leave me alone!”
They didn’t care.
Birds never do.
By noon, the road spat me into a coastal town whose defining features were peeling paint, teenage surfers with apocalyptic optimism, and a coffee shop run by a man who looked like he’d been born disillusioned. Perfect place to hide. Or write. Or pretend to write while staring out the window with the concentrated melancholy of a pseudo-intellectual avoiding real work.
That’s where I saw him again.
My disaster of a secret lover.
He walked in wearing sunglasses big enough to qualify as emotional armor, hair messy like he’d been battling gods, and a half-smirk that suggested he’d won.
“You’re running again,” he said, leaning against the counter like gravity owed him respect.
“I prefer the term wandering with purpose,” I replied, adjusting my shirt in that way people do when they’re trying to look smarter than their GPA.
“Right,” he said. “Purpose. Sure.”
We took our coffees to the beach, where the sky was aggressively blue—as if trying to convince us everything was fine. Birds strutted around us with the confidence of museum curators who know we don’t understand anything we’re looking at.
He picked up a seashell and listened for wisdom.
“I can hear the ocean,” he said.
“No,” I corrected, “you’re hearing your own expectations reflected back at you.”
He threw the shell away.
We sat there, letting the wind tangle our thoughts. He asked if I would ever stop moving.
“Probably not,” I said. “Still trying to outrun my own metaphors.”
He laughed. But it wasn’t the pretty kind. It was the kind that says I know you too well and it’s ridiculous that you think I don’t.
We kissed like people who know they shouldn’t—and that’s the only reason it was any good.
Later, he told me he had to leave again. No explanation. He travels with the same chaotic freedom as migrating birds, except he never does it for survival. More for the aesthetic.
So he walked back into town, sunglasses on, leaving me alone with the gulls, the sky, and a feeling that could either be heartbreak or caffeine overdose.
Hard to tell sometimes.
I sat on the sand, watching the birds circle like they were waiting for me to evolve. The sky darkened into a deeper, more profound shade of blue, as if it had finally grasped the value of humility.
And I thought:
Maybe this whole trip wasn’t about escape.
Maybe it was about chasing a version of myself who knew how to stay.
Then a bird stole my sandwich, and the moment passed.