“Vanishing Point”
To know the road is real. The horizon keeps moving.
An Original Song for Survivors
“Vanishing Point”
An Original Song by Tim McGuinness, Ph.D.
Music & Lyrics Copyright © 2026 – All Rights Reserved Worldwide
LYRICS
East of Flagstaff, under the wheels,
A thin note trembled beneath what was real.
Half a step low, like a wire in the air,
A sound she could hear because damage was there.
She carried a number she never would say,
A man who was never a man anyway.
She drove toward a line where the highway grew small,
Hoping the distance might answer it all.
Keep humming, keep driving,
Keep your hands on the wheel.
You don’t have to know where the road is going
To know the road is real.
The horizon keeps moving,
It was never yours to find.
The Vanishing Point is not where you arrive,
It’s what you leave behind.
There was a diner built out of need,
A face from the past and a promise to believe.
The money came back in an envelope there,
The lie wore remorse like a man who could care.
But some doors are made from the thing you want most,
Some mercy is only the shape of a ghost.
She left the check cooling beside the coffee cup,
And walked from the dream that asked her to give up.
Then came the town where everybody knew
The number, the shame, everything she’d been through.
Her loss on the billboards, her guilt in the street,
A whole world agreeing she deserved defeat.
But shame is a place where the wounded can stay,
Because nothing will challenge the worst thing they say.
She lifted the brake and let the wheels roll,
Leaving that town and its claim on her soul.
Then came the city where every known face
Could wear the same mask in a different place.
She cried, “How can I know what is false, what is true,
When a liar can look like the ones who love you?”
The woman beside her said, “Not by the face.
Watch what they do when there’s something at stake.
Watch who remains when the morning arrives.
Trust is built slowly, by time and by lives.”
There was a pull toward the shoulder,
Soft, reasonable, low:
“Stop here. You are tired.
There is nowhere left to go.”
Nothing terrible would happen.
That was the danger in the call.
Nothing would keep happening either
If she stopped moving at all.
The last place was home as it used to be,
Before loss, before fear, before memory.
Walter was living. Her old self was there,
Still standing inside an unbroken world.
She could stay in the life she remembered as true,
But the road did not lead to the person she knew.
She looked at herself and said, “I love you,”
Then turned toward the life she still had to live through.
Keep humming, keep driving,
Keep your hands on the wheel.
You don’t have to reach the horizon
For the distance to become real.
The point keeps on vanishing,
The road keeps drawing its line.
You carry the past without living inside it,
And leave what you can behind.
One note right,
Then lose it again.
Two notes tomorrow.
Try when you can.
Nobody else can sing it for you,
But someone can sing along.
The hum becomes yours,
And that makes you strong.
There is no final place
Where all suffering is gone.
There is only the road,
And the courage to move on.
Keep humming.
Keep driving.
You never reach the Vanishing Point.
You become the distance
that leaves it behind.
This is the way.
This is the way.
