Road trips and first true loves… If you’ve ever taken a road trip concurrently with falling deeper in love with someone, you know how the whole experience is ‘a mixed bag of pleasures’: A bewildering test, incredibly exhilarating and astonishingly daunting in equal measure. During the whole ordeal, ambivalence propels you – with but the occasional mirror check. When you fully commit to the road and your lover, time is someway adjourned: The past and the future cease to matter; it’s all about the now; it’s about everything and nothing at the same time. Instant gratification. I spy with my little eye… Adventure!

Road trips and first true loves… It’s easy to see how we can be fooled into believing that the possibilities are endless: The prospect of the open road with its thrills and discomforts; the far-flung corners where you give yourself entirely to the permutations of love. Your physical journey through the landscape is accentuated by the exploration of minds and bodies. Then, cruelly, reality checks in. Limitations make an unannounced but somehow foreshadowed entrance: The road trip is over; your lover is tired of traveling; and you acknowledge your gut feeling, understanding your stomach churns as prophetic smoke signals the wind of your romance enabled you to sail past.

Subsequent road trips and lovers are never the same again. There’s always that nagging feeling reverberating through your marrow. So, how do you help yourself process this information? You write a poem about it, of course. I wrote ‘We Drove Along Highway 99’ eons ago, in response to my first great heartbreak. I revisited it a couple of years ago and recently shared it with I Live For Lucy, who was inspired by it and wrote her latest song, ‘Run’ as a result. I am ILFL’s #1 fangirl and so this is a great reason to put an end to my 5-month silence, by sharing both an excerpt from the poem and the song in this post.

I LIVE FOR LUCY – RUN

I Live For Lucy is a British synthpop singer, songwriter, and producer. You can follow ILFL on SoundCloud, Twitter, and Instagram, and subscribe to her YouTube channel.