It is, of course, personal. 

The way this Ford F-150 is driving too close behind me, trailing me when it could so easily switch lanes. Instead, it simmers in the right lane behind me, growing, I imagine, increasingly resentful at my crawling pace. 

I am driving slowly because my windows are down and I am listening to Purple Rain – the song, not the album. Today it is all I have wanted to listen to – Purple Rain, particularly that punch-in-the-chest moment at the start of the third verse when Prince proclaims – 

“Honey, 

I know, I know, I know,  

times are changing” 

You know it, I’m sure, and there’s no font or stylizing that will do it justice on the page, the way it grasps the heart in its fist and grates it against the sharp gravel of Prince’s guttural ache. All day, each time I hear it, I melt shivering into the golden pool of delicious liquor-like relief, and then the pain comes like a lime chaser and I sink my teeth into it. I say, God, yes, this is what it feels like to be alive.

Sometimes when I’m driving at night I think other cars are flashing their brights at me, but they are just running over bumps in the road and it’s not personal. Sometimes when I’m driving at night I think cars are following me when they’re just driving behind me. Not personal. 

Like this Ford driver riding my ass, who is now going to follow me home and kill me, most likely, all because my nostalgic indulgence in the artist once known as Prince is interrupting his hurried commute home.

I have turned on a playlist called “Songs Like Purple Rain” and as I return to my senses, a Bon Jovi song comes on. It’s better than I expected, which I guess makes sense, because people enjoy Bon Jovi, of course. And then I think about a true Bon Jovi superfan. Someone who listens to Bon Jovi when they want that windows-down-in-the-car-this-is-what-it-is-to-fucking-LIVE feeling. 

It almost makes me lonely, to think of this hypothetical Bon Jovi fanatic I have invented – but who inevitably exists. Someone who loves Jon Bon Jovi so devotedly and completely when I don’t care about him in the slightest.

I wonder if the man in the Ford F-150 likes Bon Jovi. When I glance in the rearview mirror to check, he is gone, turned some time ago down some other road to follow his route home. 

It almost makes me lonely, to realize the killer who loves Bon Jovi wasn’t following me after all. 

Purple Rain has started to play again – an apt addition to the playlist, I suppose. The windows are down and it has started to drizzle. The cold is in my chest and I admit with an icy pang that I wish it were about me. 

But in this car, Prince sings only to me. Here, I am the only person who likes Purple Rain. I am the only person who believes in God. I am the only one who thinks they are the only one who likes Prince. 

Yet see how I break the wall, because if this poem has an ending, it’s this: you, dear reader, listening to Purple Rain at a high volume with the sort of devoted attention that begets spiritual experience. This poem will follow you, a pair of headlights on a dark and rainy road, all the way through the first and second verses, the pre-chorus and chorus. 

And when the third verse starts, and Prince sings “Honey, I know” (and you know the rest), that is where this poem turns off the road, that is where it leaves you, and you will finish the song, and you will end the poem, and where we were once together, you will be alone.

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