Maybe She, Like Me, Would Have Loved

... I Stayed Because Running Seemed Too Strange And Too Complicated. All I Knew Was How To Fall Back, Find A Patch Of Solid Ground, And Then Dig My Heels In And Fight To Start Over.

We Think Of Mortality So Little These Days... I Thought Of The Stern Victorian Determination To Keep Death In Mind, The Uncompromising Tombstones. Remember, Pilgrim, As You Pass By, As You Are Now So Once Was I: As I Am So Will You Be.

I Had Learned Early To Assume Something Dark And Lethal Hidden At The Heart Of Anything I Loved. When I Couldn't Find It, I Responded, Bewildered And Wary, In The Only Way I Knew How: By Planting It There Myself.

I Am, Of Course, Romanticizing; A Chronic Tendency Of Mine.

Real Isn't What They Try To Tell You. Time Isn't. Grown-ups Hammer Down All These Markers, Bells, Schedules, Coffee-breaks, To Stake Down Time So You'll Start Believing It's Something Small And Mean, Something That Scrapes Flake After Flake Off Of Everything You Love Till There's Nothing Left; To Stake You Down So You Don't Lift Off And Fly Away, Somersaulting Through Whirlpools Of Months, Skimming Through Eddies Of Glittering Seconds, Pouring Handfuls Of Hours Over Your Upturned Face.