By Eva Dias Costa in Jung at Heart — 19 Jul 2025

I Knew It Wasn’t Ours

Image generated by AI (because, obviously, it’s cheaper than repainting a car in a dream). Prompt: “A solitary vintage car parked under a dim streetlamp at night... boot slightly ajar, revealing it doesn’t match the body.”

We bought it again,
though no one had asked me.
The car was waiting under a streetlamp,
its paint too blue,
kept somewhere
too clean for memory.

You said it was the same one.
I nodded,
but something in its face had changed –
too smooth,
forgetting how to age.

We clipped another car
pulling out of the lot.
No sound – only the sense
of a mark left behind
that daylight would find.

The man –
was there a man?
Someone still had keys,
and drove it around
as if it had never been ours.
This gave me time
to watch it from a distance,
and feel the quiet bewilderment
of something once mine
made unfamiliar.

The boot was from something else –
rounded, borrowed.
A gesture toward beauty,
not the thing itself.

It was beautiful.
Even I seemed to think so.
But I did whisper,
this isn’t our car.

You didn’t reply.
You might not have been there.

And I stood at the edge,
as I often do,
in the part of the story
where nobody sees me
or asks if I want to drive.