Driving, Drowning

You know how headlights disappear on asphalt in the rain at night? It's like that. Disorienting. Overwhelming. Just this side of frightening. Nothing to be done but ride it out, like traveling 70mph on a rainy mountain pass, hoping the car won't careen out of control. It starts with a look. You know the one I mean, the one so subtle its meaning depends entirely on the predilection of the recipient. I wait for clarification that never comes. There you are, hunched against the weather; here am I, swallowed up like headlights in the rain. The songwriters say you never know what you've got till it's gone, but I disagree. You can only know what you've got while you have it, for when it's gone, what it might have been disappears in the reflection of what it wasn't. But the air is always so fresh after the rain, I forget to wonder where the light goes.