Red Lights Are A Mirror

[“Compact Sedan”, “2017 Toyota Corolla LE”, “Chicago Night Commute”, “$10K-$15K Used”, “Red-Light Reflection”]

11:47 p.m., North and Ashland

At 11:47 p.m. on Thursday, August 6, 2026, I was stopped at North Avenue and Ashland Avenue in Chicago, gripping the wheel of my 2017 Toyota Corolla LE while rain ticked against the windshield. I had pulled away from Nora’s apartment three minutes earlier. Her exact words were still sitting in the passenger seat with me: “You always have somewhere more urgent to be than here.”

The signal washed the whole cabin red. I caught my face in the rearview mirror and looked away. My right palm felt sticky against the steering wheel. My left sock was wet because I had stepped into a gutter outside Nora’s building. A $4.87 gas-station coffee sat in the cup holder, cold enough for the cream to form a pale skin across the top. My phone lit up once. I didn’t turn it over. No one honked. No car blocked me. I still clenched my jaw like the intersection had done something personal. I counted every second on the dashboard clock. Sixty-eight seconds! Why did sixty-eight seconds feel like an accusation?

I wanted traffic to be the villain. Traffic was easy. It had lights, rules, cameras, and somebody else controlling the timer.

I was harder to blame.

“You always have a long day”

“Stay for ten minutes.”
“I have a 7:30 call.”
“It’s almost midnight.”
“That’s why I need to go.”
“You always have somewhere more urgent to be than here.”

I had arrived at Nora’s third-floor walk-up on Bosworth Street at 10:36 p.m. She had asked me to come at nine. I carried a paper bag of dumplings that cost $18.72, and the receipt showed I had picked them up at 10:21. I blamed North Avenue traffic before I had even taken off my shoes.

The traffic excuse was dirt cheap. I had spent fourteen minutes sitting in my office parking garage, answering a message that ended with, “No rush, tomorrow is fine.” Then I watched six short videos without retaining a single one. I could have arrived earlier. I just didn’t.

Nora wanted to talk about whether I still planned to move in when her lease ended in September. I kept glancing at the Teams banner on my phone while she spoke. The dumplings went cold between us, and soy sauce soaked through one corner of the bag.

“Do you even want to be here?” she asked.

“I am here.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

I hated that answer as soon as it left my mouth. It sounded sharp and smug, like I had found a technicality that could win the night. But what did I win? Nora folded her arms and stared at the wet paper bag instead of me.

I tried again. “I know this isn’t right. I’m conflicted too. But I just—”

“You just keep leaving.”

That sentence hit me like a wall. She didn’t raise her voice. I almost wished she had! Anger would have given me something to push against. Her quiet made my stomach tighten.

I picked up my jacket. Nora looked at my hand on the doorknob and said, “Leave the key if you’re going.”

So I slid her spare key off my ring. I placed it on the kitchen counter beside two unopened soy-sauce packets, then walked out before either of us said the word breakup.

Why did sixty-eight seconds feel personal?

I hate stopping because movement lets me tell a better story about myself. When I’m driving, I’m on my way. When I’m typing, I’m productive. When I answer Slack at 10:31 p.m., I get to feel needed instead of lonely.

But where was I rushing at 11:47? I was heading toward my studio apartment, half a container of rice, and seventeen unread personal messages. My work inbox had no emergency waiting inside it. The 7:30 call would last nineteen minutes and could survive without me rehearsing for it at midnight.

Okay, the light was only traffic, BUT it had caught me with no email open, no podcast playing, and no sentence ready. I had to sit there with the fact that Nora asked me for ten minutes and I acted like she had reached into my chest and demanded an organ.

Was I exhausted? Yeah. Was that the whole thing? No.

I kept wanting to call it burnout because burnout sounds clean. It comes with a packed calendar, cold coffee, and a sympathetic nod from a coworker. “Unavailable” sounds uglier. It sounds like Nora sitting across from me while I checked a notification that said nothing urgent.

My chest went tight under the seat belt. I tugged the strap away from my collarbone, but the pressure stayed.

I had seen that red face before

On Monday morning at 8:42, I was stopped near Milwaukee and Damen when my manager sent, “Need the client deck by 9.” I had two slides left and eight minutes of driving before I reached the office garage. I leaned toward the windshield and whispered, “Come on, come on,” as if the traffic signal could hear me negotiating.

I reached my desk at 8:53. I sent the deck at 9:07. My manager replied “thx” at 9:16, and nothing collapsed during those seven late minutes. Still, I carried that red-light anger into lunch. I snapped a plastic fork while trying to open a salad container.

At 5:12 p.m. the Saturday before, I took my mom’s call while stopped at Diversey and California. I could hear her washing machine thumping in the background.

“You sound rushed,” she said.

“I’m in traffic.”

“I can call another time.”

“No, it’s fine.”

I wasn’t lying about where I was. I was lying about what traffic had done to me. I had been sitting still for twenty-two seconds, yet I spoke like I was steering through a storm with both hands occupied. She asked whether I was eating enough. I said, “Yep, all good,” while looking at an empty granola-bar wrapper on the floor.

The light changed. I said I had to go.

I remembered that call at North and Ashland, and shame crept up the back of my neck. How many conversations had I escaped with the same three words? I’m in traffic. It sounded so harmless.

What red lights mirror back at me

I say I need rest, then I answer work messages after midnight four nights in one week. I tell my mom I’ll call Sunday, then I let her voicemail sit for six days. I tell Nora that time together matters, then I cancel three dinners in nineteen days because somebody added “quick sync” to my calendar.

And I get furious over sixty-eight seconds at an intersection.

That number embarrassed me. I had spent twenty-three minutes scrolling in the office garage before seeing Nora, but I treated one red light like theft. What was traffic stealing from me that I hadn’t already tossed away myself?

I used to think my impatience came from my dad. When I was seventeen, I sat beside him in his green 2004 Honda Accord at Pulaski Road and Irving Park Road while he tapped both thumbs against the steering wheel. We were heading to my cousin Elena’s graduation.

“This city is designed to make us late,” he said.

We had left home twenty-two minutes late.

I believed him anyway. I watched the red signal reflected in his glasses, and I learned the rhythm of his thumbs: tap-tap, pause, tap-tap. On August 6, I caught my own hands making that same rhythm at North and Ashland.

I don’t know if I learned this from him or if I use that memory to make my mess look inherited. Isn’t that convenient? I can point backward, call it family wiring, and avoid admitting how often I choose the rush now.

The red light didn’t explain me. It just removed my usual hiding places.

The cheap mirror was honest to a fault

I paid $13,400 for that used 2017 Toyota Corolla LE at a Skokie car lot in October 2022. I remember the exact price because I argued the dealer down by $300 and spent the drive home feeling like a real adult. The rearview mirror already had a pinhead-sized chip near its lower edge.

At idle, the mirror trembles just enough to split bright lights into two shapes. One shape stays sharp. The other hangs beside it like a ghost.

That Thursday night, the red traffic signal doubled across the glass. My face sat between both circles. I saw the dent from my headset pressed into my hair, mascara collecting beneath one eye, and a raw spot on my bottom lip where I had bitten it during the drive.

I looked tired. Not the cute kind of tired from a late concert or an early flight. I looked mean. Cornered. Like I had been arguing with someone for hours, though the person in front of me was just me.

So I tilted the mirror toward the roof.

The red glow moved across the gray headliner instead. I had removed my face, but I hadn’t removed the light. How embarrassing is it to lose an argument with a piece of glass?

“Just turn green!” I shouted.

My voice bounced off the closed windows. I sounded small and furious, and I knew the light wasn’t the thing I wanted to change.

Green was not relief

The signal switched at 11:48. I stayed still long enough for the driver behind me to tap the horn. Then I pressed the accelerator too hard and felt the tires bump over the white lane marker.

I caught another red at Damen. Fifty-four seconds. Then another at Western.

At Damen, I turned my phone over. Nora had sent five words: “Text me when you get home.”

That message felt crushing, and I can’t even explain why without sounding ungrateful. She was checking that I was safe after I had walked out on her. I wanted that care. The second it appeared, I wished she had left me alone.

I typed, “I’m sorry.”

I erased it.

I typed, “I didn’t mean for tonight to—”

I erased that too. The blinking cursor felt suffocating. My palms started sweating again, and I wiped them one at a time on my jeans.

At Western, I said, “I’m such a mess,” out loud. No dramatic crying followed. One eye watered while the other stayed dry, and my nose started running. I grabbed a stiff brown napkin from the glove box and held it against my face.

The light stayed red.

I wanted to go home, yet I moved into the slower lane after Western. I wanted Nora to text again, yet I turned my phone facedown. Was I delaying the empty apartment, or was I hoping the city would keep me from making the next decision?

I didn’t know. I still don’t.

12:09 a.m., inside the garage

I pulled into the garage behind my Logan Square apartment at 12:09. A neighbor’s SUV sat ahead of me with its brake lights on, filling my windshield with the same dull red glow. I put the Corolla in park but kept both hands at ten and two.

The SUV rolled out. Its red light slid across the concrete wall and disappeared.

I stayed in the driver’s seat.

At 12:11, Nora sent, “Are you home?”

I replied, “Home.”

She wrote, “Okay.”

I started an apology beneath that one word. I wrote three lines about work, fear, the lease, and how I didn’t know why I kept running when nobody was chasing me. Then I held backspace until the message box was empty.

I opened my work email instead. No new messages. I refreshed it twice.

The cabin light shut itself off, and my face returned in the dark mirror. I could still smell the burned coffee. I could feel dried rainwater cooling inside my left sock. Nora’s spare key was no longer on my ring, leaving a clean silver gap between my apartment key and the tiny grocery-store card.

I wish I could say I called her from the garage. I didn’t. I carried the $4.87 coffee upstairs, set it beside the sink, and left it there until morning.

I still can’t explain why that red glow made my chest feel so small in that quiet garage. I only know I sat there with both hands on the wheel, wanting the light to change and scared of what I would have to become once it did.