“No one” is (t)here.

I went driving the other night to listen to music and just to look for things that might not be there.
It was only around eleven p.m. and no one was outside, or inside.

The gas station was closed, out of all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen the gas station closed at this time.
No one was in the stores, no workers, just cameras and self checkouts. It was open but no one was there, at all.

No one was waiting outside anywhere smoking, waiting for their friends, or just hanging out, not a single soul. Alive anyway.

No one was walking, just the silent night with my mother and I… only us except for that one van with two men sitting outside of it.
The men were the only people to be found, which made my mother lock the car doors while she went in the empty store. Watching the men, making sure they don’t come closer to me. The only girl in town at the time.

They didn’t come closer. After they left there was only us again.
But perhaps there was only ghosts or spirits out, maybe it was their night to be out.
Making fun of us for not seeing them, or maybe missing what we have. But what we don’t always want.

I wanted so badly to grab my best friends and stay out in the town until four a.m.. I miss laying in the middle of the street late at night scaring them with it for the rare chance that I don’t hear the cars that rarely come.
But I always hear and see them.
I just like laying in the street just to be there. Scaring them is fun but that’s not the only reason for it.

The way we walked up and down the road enjoying the nothingness. But it felt like everything, to me at least. I miss it.
Waiting for a bear to cross the road so one of my friends could run off chasing it.
There was no one there either, except maybe the rare occasion that one of the town drunkies has a good conversation to hold with us.

We always looked out for those few people that we didn’t want to see in the middle of the night. Or ever.
“We” as in me checking the streets we pass, looking behind us. Always gotta protect what’s here before it’s gone.