Someone You Know (Knew)

***[faint CB radio static crackles, then a lone, warbling synth fades in like headlights cutting fog at dawn]***

*[low, gravel voice, almost whispered over the hum]*

This one’s for the rearview mirror…

where the people we loved turned into strangers

before the engine even cooled.

Pink light on cracked vinyl seats,

your laugh still echoes in the tape hiss.

Used to taste like cherry smoke and forever—

now just ghosts riding shotgun.

Goddamn it hurts

when someone you know

turns into someone you *knew*.

Like chrome rusting under sodium glow,

like love left melting on the dash.

You’re gone

but the ache still rides

shotgun.

I keep your number lit up at 3 a.m.,

thumb shaking over “Don’t.”

One ring and I’d hear Shalimar and lies—

or worse,

nothing at all.

It’s murder, baby—

quiet, slow murder—

watching “us” fade to static,

watching you become

a stranger

I still bleed for.

*[synth and steel guitar drift apart, slowing, fading]*

*[soft, broken murmur over dying 808 pulse]*

Keep drivin’, cowboy…

even when the only passenger left

is the hole you carved out.

*[final slide into black… neon buzz lingers one last second… then gone]*