Sweet summer has ascended onto the fields, and the grasses are glowing gold. My sunglasses can barely keep hold onto the bridge of my nose while I drive, windows down, back to my half-forgotten home on the edge of a small town. I’ve driven these roads all my life, but today they are different. Today they are too small for me, and my car feels like it barely makes contact with the pavement.
The radio is turned up high. It’s the third time I’ve played the song on this drive, and each spin gets a little louder. This song is new to me, as is every sentiment attached to this day. It seems to be made of shapes that were just invented, to be sung by voices that don’t ask why. Funny to think that for 12 years the song has existed, familiar to some, lost to others, and revealed to me just today. As I pull into the driveway, I think I’m lucky. But I’m not lucky, I’m just on track.
The air is saturated with possibilities and this mix CD is the soundtrack. By saying no, I learned to say yes. Yesterday’s facts are today’s forgotten history. I’m moving beyond the context that held me still, and into a world with new romance, new music, new cities, new dreams.
Newness makes this house feel like a decoration. When I enter, the linoleum floors are sticky and hollow, and the living room echos the indecisiveness of empty walls.
I think of the city that awaits my return, 70 miles away, muggy and grimy and active past 6 p.m. Here the humid air comes down past the trees and in through the window screens. I still savor the scent of hot leaves, but my heart is where the air smells like dirty sidewalks and pizza windows. That’s where he is, glowing in the spaces that hold him.
The couch takes my body’s weight familiarly, and I sit enjoying the longing. I’m almost sad to be apart from it all, but if I wasn’t here in this empty room I couldn’t feel the elasticity of the space between past and future. The distance makes everything load in deeper colors, and lets me hold things before I have to put them down. I gather the possibilities to my chest like candy from a parade. I will make music. I will get away. I will fall in love. I will explore. I will be true.
When the front door opens, I’m still sitting on the couch holding my possibility candies. My roommate walks in frowning.
“Hey,” I say. “How was work.”
He shrugs. “It was work.”
“I’m moving out,” I say, without feigning remorse.
“Oh,” he says flatly. “Have you told him?”
“Not yet,” I say, and look at my hands unable to erase my inappropriate grin. “I’ll pay rent until the lease is up.”
He stares. “Cool,” he says, and walks away.
Up until two months ago, the third bedroom in this house was an office space. Now it’s my bedroom, my space, my room with a ridiculous canopy above the bed because I’ll do what I want.
When he comes home, I hear him through the closed bedroom door and feel uncomfortable. The distance can’t come soon enough. There is an aching in this home, but I’m moving away from it. Seventy miles south, someone is singing me to sleep.
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Wow!