Christmas Eve

It’s still technically the middle of a pandemic, but it’s also the day before Christmas Eve, so the streets are packed. The red and green of the traffic lights echo the season. Roads are clogged with traffic, cars impatiently lined up at every stop light and back to the previous one, exhausts grumbling at the delay.

A car booms Christmas carols from blown speakers, rattling its own windows with flabby bass, and the rest of the cars edge forward and stop, forward and stop, forward and stop.