{ more of the afterward }

i have run through the fields

only to be with you

only to be with you

would you?

i've often asked the most impossible question in order to procure the answer i knew was coming: no. i can't. i don't want to. i don't want you. some people feel storms coming in their bones; i can sense abandonment from miles away. a shadow in the marrow of my days, the smallest lesion on each embrace. and before i knew it, he was gone ---

abandonments are like hurricanes --- they follow certain patterns, you prepare as much as you can, but each one cuts a wider path of destruction than the last. i've mapped each one in minute detail. i've felt them approaching but chosen to believe that certainly the same bolt wouldn't strike the same girl twice, through the upper right chamber of the heart, just missing the liver, fracturing the seventh rib, traveling down the length of the left leg before blasting a hole in the ground big enough to get lost in for weeks, months, years...

this is all old psychology, we've been over it. you don't know anything about it, and you shouldn't have to. because a desirable woman throws no shadows, she is tall and full of light, without jammed doors or grimy windows. also, she's thin and domestically inclined. she never buys silk scarves on impulse. she is best friends with her mother. she can bake a pie in her sleep and she never asks too much.

make the choice. make the
choice. make

the choice.

we both know what direction you're going, and it's the only direction i know from everywhere i've stood: away. on this side of it all, i always think i want to see that face again, but i'm beginning to believe that's because everyone seems so much more necessary when they're walking away. even now if you turned around, i'm not sure you'd look anything like the irresistibly broken person i remember.

i don't know how to escape this, but i'm leaving.
i don't know how to get better, but i'm getting out of bed.
i don't know if i'll ever be the same, but i'm not sure i'd want to anyway.

with everything ---
she