O’ you can never say goodbye to her you can never say goodbye Just goodnight

It was a 10:30 dash into the sunset and saying goodbye in the dusk. Not a word was spoken. Not one syllable uttered, but in the silence you could hear it all.
And it’s dark now. One last night in Missoula .
I go out and sit on the concrete steps in the city dark, that dusky orange and murky black brown.

I let down my hair so that the smell of mountain air(the sweetest air I might add) , pine tree, Clarkfork, Blackfoot and Bitterroot River, and Missoula concrete can braid in between each curl, because I know 30 miles outside of the state line, I’ll long to smell it. When I breathe in deep enough sometimes I swear it I can still smell it, but that seems to happen less and less these days.

I watch people wander about the streets and even though I’m bare foot, my feet itch to be with them. I am them. I am Missoula too. I’m always on those steps, on that porch, or in that shop window even when I’m 2,300 miles away.

I look to the church in front of me and I stare at the steeple and I ask where I am supposed to be? I let my eyes pray. The only answer I get tonight comes in the rhythmic flashing of sleepy stop lights burning gold to black, gold to black. Proceed with caution. No definite yes, no definite no.

That courageous part of me says yes.
That yellow bellied coward part of me says, “you’ll never.”
It’s confusing to be part pioneer pilgrim and part ridge runner hillbilly.
I suffer greatly from whiplash.

The courthouse clock tolls midnight and suddenly my goodbye day starts. Time in Montana has a way of blurring but it plays a wicked game of gotcha and catch up when it has too, and for the first time in two weeks I feel it squeeze, I feel it rush past me like a lint ball sucking into a vacuum hose.

The clock strikes twelve with a violent last bell and for a second or two the street grows quite and glows street light, tungsten orange and the only sound I can hear is the quickened blab of my heart against my chest.