The car halts by the gas pump
Underneath glaring yellow lights.
I get out, car door echoing through the lot
Against the small building’s brick walls.
Inside, I join the few people
Sitting alone on the benches
Or enjoying the company of a mutually silent companion.
I buy a coffee and let the steam drift over my smiling lips.
No one is in a hurry.
No one disturbs the serenity we have found here.
There is a certain sense of human connection
As we come together for merely a blink of existence.
People come and go here.
This is no one’s destination,
Merely a place that they pass through
While a hint of something more still lingers.
I return to my car under the smoldering yellow lights
And look at the washed-out sky,
Unable to see any stars behind the haze.
Still, I know they are there, as they always are.
Julia Freidly is a junior computer science major at Penn State Harrisburg.
