Clothes on the Freeway

Today on the freeway I passed several piles of clothes.
They were men's clothing, flannels and knitted hats - socks and other items.
I wondered about the story.

A badly-packed moving van, a pickup; items thrown carelessly and tied haphazardly with too-little rope?
What of the story?

Bad breakup - last minute preparations - idiocy.
What?

Or a young woman, having been dumped by one of the first of many worthless lovers, being driven around town by an understanding and sympathetically angry friend, eyes red from crying for hours, deeply pulling on cigarette after cigarette while a song they love that says everything so exactly right plays on a continuous loop - stabbed by the index finger of the girl at the closing swell of music. The friend drives while looking over and agreeing with all the aspects of the loser boyfriend that the friend wants her to know.

You Know? she'll say. And the friend will nod, understanding, or say, Fuck yeah.

YouKnowYouKnowYouKnowYouKnowYouKnow? And the friend will know. Over and over again while they drive with the small items he left in her house. Items he doesn't want, which is why they've stayed at the girlfriend's house this whole time.

And they'll be on the freeway, and the girl's heart will break in a crashing wave larger than all the crashing waves she's felt since he told her, and she'll turn to her friend and tell her she's going to throw his shit out, and the friend will look over and her heart will twist, the girl's red rimmed eyes and phlegmy sniffling - the byproduct of furious tears that rise and fall in the crescendos of the song, and she'll say, absolutely.

And she'll grab armfuls of his clothes and she'll toss them out the window and they'll howl at this, and turn the music up louder, and she'll feel better for a minute, light a new cigarette and nod her head vigorously like she's shaking the ache off, and then they'll fall silent and continue driving, and the tears will break again like waves against the shore.

And this will be the first of so many men that will twist her heart and break her places, but she'll always have this story.

She will always have this story.