Six miles this way.

Today, I thought the most reckless thing I could do was drive across a bridge hovering over a very pregnant and angry river. Overflowing river banks are nothing compared to finding myself alone with nothing but hours of waiting to fill my time. I had no place to be until four so I turned right solely because a sign promised me that there would be a campground six miles down the road. I spend most days looking for signs. This one seemed honest enough. I never saw a campground.

I need new glass or.................

Maybe I just need to close my eyes for a while so that when I reopen them I can see the world a little different?

What you say to the dark.

What you say to the dark.


I stood with the key in the door, face against the glass wondering if I should turn that knob or not. I've driven by the camp twice and up to it once and I'd never been able to make it out of the car. I was now at the door and I still didn't know if I could go in. I knew you weren't going to be in there, but something silly and unreasonable in me tried to convince myself that you'd might just be. I leaned against the door so long the glass fogged over from the combination of my breath and my tears. I turned the knob and I spilled into the kitchen and that old, familiar and wonderful musty smell greeted me and I've never wanted to turn around and leave so bad in my life. How can it be there, that house, that smell and you not be? You're just as much that place as I am. I loved you there. You sat on the couch, and you slept in that bed and you rested by the river. I made you peanut butter and M&M cookies and you cooked pizza in that oven. You touched that spoon and this one. You sat on the couch and did your breathing treatments while I read in the chair. I washed your ice cream bowels and your cereal bowels while you played video games as I rinsed them out and put them on the rack to dry. I liked the way that felt. I liked way that sounded. It was so normally average and common. It was evidence that you existed.

The living room was full of the outdoor furniture. I could hardly see the couch, and yet I expected you to be setting there on the corner with your big, wonderfully dirty feet stretching out before you. I could see you there, inviting me over. Oh, to grab that fuzzy green blanket and lay my head in your lap as we watch a movie. To feel your fingers in my hair and your warm hand on my back. I could close my eyes and I could hear your and feel you and see you there, but when I opened my eyes it was just stacks of green rocking chairs, that certain porch swing and dots of wicker chairs.

I headed past your bedroom knowing there was no way I cold pause there,even for a second. I remember on the mornings I'd wake up before you that I'd tiptoe past your room as quiet and as loud as I could. I didn't want to wake you up but I did all the same. I ran to my bed and I tucked my arms under me. The cold air rested around me but I stayed in that on spot until it warmed from my body heat alone, and that's all that I felt there, my body heat and damp cold pillow that only suffered more as I cried into it. I'd brave peek now and then through my curls and still you weren't' there smiling back and acting like you weren't just watching me. How can all that be here and you not be?

I lay there until the quiet bothered me. The trains rushed past and the dogs barked and both seemed louder than they ought too. I remember you said you'd hid stuff throughout the house and I began ripping into it even though I found almost all of it before you even left. Your letters and your t-shirt all remind me that maybe you knew all along that that week was it. I looked in every drawer and every cabinet and under every bed. I found nothing else. I still didn't find you. I remember when my aunt and I drove over and closed it down for winter, that as I boxed up the food, I found your cans of soup and how that made me sigh and that the other day at the house, I saw it in the pantry I found it again and this time it made me cry. Can you immortalize a can of soup? I may take it back and glue it to cabinet shelf. Just more proof you were indeed there.

I let the screen door slam the way I like it too and I went and sat on the river bank. I sat close to the fire pit the way we did that evening. I remember we sat there for a while even though it was raining. The rain pelted the river but the the trees sheltered us for a while longer and protected the fire. We ended up sitting in the screen room watching the fire fade out from there. I left when the ground felt too cold and the wind blowing off the water cut and pinked up my skin. I walked back through the house on more time, just in case you sneaked in while I was on the river. I locked the door and I sat on the front steps. I remembered you
setting there with me one afternoon talking about the cone flowers and the marigolds.

How can I be here and you not be? I'd rather talk to you than whisper in the dark.

24

They pushed you by.
Deceivingly quiet I sat.
Inside stormed,"Not yet. Just a few more minutes please. Please?
They drove you away anyway.....

Episodic?
Oh, yes please.

I fall apart.I hit the road.
I’m only as good as the charge on my mp3 player.
I take the long way home.

I am music, really,really bad music, until the tiny hours of morning.
(techno beats and everything)
Diet Mt.Dew has yet to equal a bubbly cure for insomnia.
Just thought I’d experiment.

A little reverse psychology.

It’s still just fizzy fruit juice laced with crack.
My heart feels like it will explode upon consumption.

I have pages of words, but I can’t find them.
How can I tell your mother of the ways I loved you?
How can the words I tell your father ever surface the way they sit honest and true and big in me?

We seem to be novella.

I am.........

A quiet dark thing.

The Days After...........

I don’t know what normal is right now.
I just know that nothing seems normal at all.
I keep sneaking back
to the blue shade of the mountain shadows.
I greatly disagree with the sun.
I'm finding solace in written words.
I’m still searching for my own.
10 p.m.. quickly becomes my worst hour.
I hate trying to sleep.
I lay there ready and waiting, sure that, that concept has
died too.
It’s one, it’s two, it’s three in the morning and dark
finally kisses my eye lids.
I hate waking up.
The previous days progress is lost in dreamless sleep.
I blink once. I blink twice.
I start all over again.