There Is a Light That Never Goes Out: Driving Into Forever

Lauren Nixon-Matney • July 18, 2025
There Is a Light That Never Goes Out: Driving Into Forever

The Smiths: There is a light that never goes out

For Jamie (Brightness)


It began like most beautiful things do—

in motion.

A soft breeze against the skin,

the tremble of headlights tracing a lonely road,

in the gentle hush between words, where people with no place left to go find one another.

The moment before a hand reaches out

and finds a home.


Love like this doesn’t shout.

It plays from the stereo at midnight,

spilling out like stardust and cigarette smoke,

humming promises into the dark.

It feels like falling—

not just once,

but again

and again.


Because some hearts don’t settle.

They search.

They wreck.

They run.

They return.

They rise.

They remember how to begin

by learning how to break.


And still—

there is a light.

Not loud, not proud.

Just steady.

Just there.

In the pulse of the music.

In the hush between words.

In the way some songs

sound like staying and healing

even when they ache like goodbye.


A song for lovers who’ve crashed and crawled back,

who understand that the truest light

doesn’t burn out—

it burns on.


And if the world ended tonight,

if the sky split open just past the curve of the highway,

there would be no tragedy

in being right here beside you.


Because to be beside someone

who’s seen all your ruins

and still held your hand?



To love, to lose, to heal. That’s the meaning of it all. It’s everything.

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