Guardrail Keeps the Swerve

What if the guardrail along the mountain pass doesn't remember the crashes at all, only the near misses: the swerve that corrected itself, the tire that found gravel and held. Its dents map hesitation, not impact. Each ripple in the steel marks a driver who almost let go of the wheel and didn't. The guardrail was built to stop falling cars, but it has become something else, a ledger of doubt considered and set back down. Fog collects in its grooves at dawn, tracing the shape of every choice not made. No collision required. Just the small, sideways drift toward the edge, caught, corrected, forgotten by morning, kept by the rail.