a broadcast and the sea

Tonight the black and billowing clouds of loneliness are silently shifting in the night's sky and I am a 1978 jalopy galloping down a cold and desolate stretch of interstate on balding tires and a dying engine. The chassis is rusting and rattling and looking for a warm ditch to call a home of permanence. The headlights are fading and the bulbs illuminating the gauges are dying in the dashboard and the fuzzy radio struggles to pull in the sound from a distant tower.
"O, Babe! I need your broadcast. I need to receive the waves of your sound.
"To receive is to revive.
"To revive is to bare witness to another day and another broadcast of static and hope."
I am the slovenly and slouching driver behind the wheel of this wreck born in 1978. My pulse is slowing and my eyes are drooping as I struggle to steer this body into the night.
Into this night and under those stars is a soul whose aim is true but hands are shaky. Fingernails like thin sheets of ice with cracking flesh wrapped tight around cold digits. Dry hands and wet heart and my head is an expired parking meter filled with dead and useless currency; the soiled coins of memory have long since lost their luster.
Yes, we live in different times now. Our skepticism - colder, our hearts - none the wiser, our souls - repentant ghosts eager to spoil every clean and new chapter.
"O, Babe! I need your broadcast, for the rumble of this engine and the rhythm of this heart are weathering and withering the rusting chains wrapped around the porcelain of my sanity."
Only the static responds.
Static.
Static.
Static.
Nothing.
Has Her tower toppled? Has Her voice dissolved?
Like a caged falcon finally free I roar past the final exit. A cliff and the black sea are dead ahead and my heart submits to its darkest desire. My aim is true and these hands are still.
Tires turning and touching earth.
Tires turning and touching earth.
Tires turning and touching nothing.
Spinning wild and free, wild and free, gracing the empty spaces of the night. Wild and free and I'm floating and I'm falling and my eyes devour a glorious moon, a sea, a sky, a line where the sea and the sky kiss and a flock of flying ghosts, the ghosts of waves - YES! - the ghosts of radio waves - Her radio waves! - and that familiar sound of Her voice, free of static and simply free, flies into my ears and bathes my heart and then...
IMPACT
The water.
Rushing.
Invading.
The interior of this vehicle, awash with foam and sea.
And death. Death will befriend me in a matter of moments but peace has already discovered my name.
Her broadcast pulls me close to Her breast and to receive is to revive.
Revive.
Revive.
Revive.
And then I succumb - with Her in my heart and sea in my lungs.

mc