The Empty Road

I stood in the middle of the street tonight, feeling the damp wind swirl around me up and down that asphalt strip blinking with the carnival-corridor late-night lights. Deserted of its usual travelers, the road seemed at ease, free somehow: it had become just like the rest of the earth-a surface. A roach skittered by, unaware that he trod upon a man's road.

I suppose what struck me was the thought of how unimportant the road seemed when unpopulated by the one thing that made it purposeful. And yet still walking across it, I remained apprehensive, tense; I considered it somehow dangerous even though there were clearly no cars coming or going. It's funny how something can hold that power over us even when we know in the current circumstances it poses no threat. It was a rather entrancing feeling.