The 
Car
 
A car speeds down the highway, faster and faster, the lights but a blurred 
fluorescence lost in the endless dark. The pitch-blackness so thick it can 
swallow everything, it can even hide myself. 
The darkness that I love, that lets me 
disappear. 
The music pulses louder and louder, equivalent with our glorious 
speed. 
If only I could be so invisible forever, 
moving so fast as to escape it all, escape even this life maybe. Our velocity 
far surpassing that of sadness and guilt and love. 
The blood stained air slices through me. 
Such a beautiful and deserved execution, my tragic, grand farewell. I am 
nothing, I am nowhere, against this backdrop of a blank abyss I am and shall be 
forever intangible. 
I slip through the door painted only for me, and instantly as I leave time 
all behind, it no longer exists and neither does any of this I’ve known. 
My abattoir emancipated, I have found 
that hinted to me in dreams, as I nearly woke up so many times, yet was impeded 
by this Earth’s greedy slave hold. 
I knew that I was never meant for it, I knew all along. 
And yet what was it I ever feared? To 
leave this loathsome place? Brainwashed by them as well, what did I ever 
convince myself to see in this? What redemption has it offered yet ripped 
countless apologies from me? 
What beauty has it offered to my lacquered, thaumatrope eyes?
How am I to know its beauty, and they to say I’m not? What is beauty? What 
makes those fortunate so and those not condemned? 
Who chooses these titles, these 
lotteries, these classes? 
What collection of atoms, of energies, have sentenced us to be here? Left 
amidst the rubble of purpose, chanting blindly to ourselves: I must work harder, 
I must be beautiful, I must have more money, I must earn my way into 
heaven.
And what are the rewards they reap, the fruit of their dolorous 
labors? 
They wither and die. 
They do not know that there’s a heaven. 
They believe there is, for they’ve been told. They are sure of it, in fact; they 
become angry with those who have doubted. Their lives toiled away trying to get 
there, standing in an endless line for admittance, an infinite pilgrimage to a 
doubtful Mecca. 
But they do not know. 
My car speeds on. Going nowhere, my car and my music and myself, going 
forth nowhere, a pulchritudinous nothing. 
A weight is lifted from me. 
My cross, my burden, my body. 
What, after all, is it needed for but this life’s futile deeds? 
I have never known such paralleled freedom. Have I ever known any? Could I 
have even dreamt of such? 
Faster and faster, momentously spinning 
off into vast and vacant space. This unbridled, searched for antiworld, all 
chains left behind. Leaden chains of shackled regret, of hate, of insanity, of 
lies, and of love. 
A life, no countless, spent, wasted, or perhaps merely lived, looking 
blindly for keys. 
Spray painted eyes, though merciful, sew them open, stitch by stitch. They 
must see, they have earned this. 
Let the blood burn through their apathy, 
give them sight, hide not behind their laws. 
Gaze, stare if they must, unto this state they have created. 
Yes, they made this, could it have ever been different there is no answer, 
it is now the human condition. Forget humane, they have never borne 
association. 
No keys have been buried, they must have burned them, was there any 
merciful surrender ever meant for this race in the first place. 
What do you feel? Have you forgotten how? 
It is what grabs hold of you from inside, 
what pierces your heart, rips open your brain, screams from frantic decibels 
within each vein, what pulses behind your eyes and burns them, bringing 
tears. 
It is pity you feel, contempt? Perhaps 
pain, though love is the worst. 
I believe they all may crush you, but you 
will not die, as much as you’d like to, as much as you pray. 
That you may suffer in their wake is my 
goodbye. I feel nothing in my new atmosphere.
Cold
Cold. Air 
 Cold. Air just as cold as icicled black thread wrapped around sloppily 
painted nails.
Slowly it sings. The cold. Such a carefully orchestrated sadness  the 
justice of a random blue bird  the pinion of a ceramic-held frown plastered on 
the stone face of the Queen of Spades.
Solitary. It is the only game she knows 
how to play. She is so good at it, sitting on these peacock velvet 
chairs, 
Rigid. Rigid with the lack of love and paralyzed by their own gilded 
exterior. 
As well as that of the girl. Who politely 
ignores the screaming of the broken clock defective for this complicated Earth 
time, and stares at the television, angrily talking to no one and blaming its 
prison on everyone all at once.
It does not comfort the girl. It merely jeers at her, this girl who has won 
one game, and lost a more important one…
She lifts slowly her muscadine wine 
laboriously to her lips, but it shatters in her frozen grasp. Staining her 
perfectly starched albino dress.
She goes on playing. Playing her myriad 
of solitary card games. Except for the lonely stare from the Queen, no one will 
notice.
Sunset
 
Meaning slowly seeps away, precious blood cascading through the fingertips 
of outstretched time. It is ephemeral, intangible, impossible to keep
A glimpse caught amid the early morning 
sunrise. Blinding beauty, beauty blinding, but a painted canvas draped over what 
lies ahead
Glimmering façade belying the darkness. 
Infallible lies. Invisible darkness impossible dread to escape
The tears are never far away. They lurk 
in every regret, every uncertainty and hesitation, every lost debate 
Forgotten words coming back to haunt, to ensure they’re unforgiven
Pen in hand, but a feeble attempt to recreate that which dies the moment it 
exists. Only a feeling, in its split second existence, keeps us in its power, 
waiting for more   wanting for more
empty promises
Perhaps there is no more
Whether this world, in the end, has been too much or too little is of no 
consequence. It will end with the simple reflection of whether it has been 
anything at all
The other cars speed by now as you sit, 
suspended animation, in some false and thickened atmosphere, deafened by this 
heartless charade around you
This is no place for a tortured soul, 
this earth
 there is no place…
Kahlia 
Vaillancourt is a full time nurse, writer, and creator. She is currently 
pursuing a degree in library science, and has enjoyed a lifetime love of all 
things literary. She is also fond of animals, art, music, coffee, and 
intelligence. She presently resides in Las Vegas with her husband, daughter, and 
2 furbabies. She calls Detroit her home. 
 
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