I went back.  The road was cold, fall's fading wind blowing hard on my face as I smoked to stay awake, swimming in my head and the radio, occasionally coming up for air to pick up the phone and mumble.  I left Chicago behind in my taillights to cross the great divide between you and I, running with my shoes untied, stumbling in thought back to where I left off, midsentence, midyawn, my hands on the steering wheel and staring.

It seemed interminable, my imprisonment.  I stopped to take a piss halfway there and stretched my legs, lifted my head to the impossible sky scattered with tiny pinpricks of light.  The depth of it seemed to suck me in, the thickness of the night, the lights of the gas station, I, engulfed in field and nothing, and the sky in a standoff.  After a second or a year, I found my keys buried beneath envelopes and dead pens at the bottom of my purse.  Lit a cigarette, climbed back in, and kept going.  The rest went without note, a silent anticipation rising and coursing underneath my skin, coming to a boil as I spotted my exit, my bliss.  My portal to you.

The streets are still the same there, the decorations have changed.  I slowed to a stop outside a house hidden behind trees and a high staircase.  I sat for a moment, staring up towards the building, eventually opening the door to my car and climbing the uneven stone stairs.  I abandoned the cigarette in my mouth to hug the dark haired man who greeted me and took my coat, and he disappeared inside.  I shyly entered, and through the yellow softness, I surveyed the infamiliarity, the cold strangeness of time gone by.  I looked down to the floor and spotted my shadow, relieved, afraid, and I sank into the couch, paralyzed, cold, silent, and alone.

I smoked a joint to dispel the nicotine, like falling down a flight of right angles.  I drifted and stared up, down there in my quiet, thoughtful haze, as I slowly slipped into a shallow slumber, ignoring the light from the hall.

The following day flooded in with the morning light through the blinds.  Faces, laughter, you and you and you warm and winesoaked, we lounged and enjoyed each other, inflated and elated to understand and unwind the tangle of our youth, our madness.  We skipped from place to grass to couch, twisted in conversation and the sweet, comfortable silence between inhales.  We walked our familiar paths, untouched in so long.  My worship and admiration had not quite faded, but I had forgotten to acknowledge the blisters on my feet and mind – red and swollen, their content oozing simultaneously in a painful release.  

We made our way through the dust and brambles, illuminating attic and hillside with the elusiveness of our laughter.  I watched you so carefully then, scrutinizing, memorizing the lines in your face, the clearness of your eyes.  As we walked together, arm in arm up the empty street, we watched the sky grow weary, exploding into a brilliant red, and slowly sinking to a dim purple, then in a hush, a moment, a blink, yielding to the same vast, inky violet as before.

The night descended in an erratic, intoxicating haze.  We danced carelessly and barefoot in the yard, spewing guts, filth, and lunacy.  We enjoyed the sweetness of reunion, our celebration never ceasing even as we slept, as you and your blanket spread across me, spinning still, lying and ecstatic as the first gray rays of sun peered over the Mississippi.

A mess that morning.  I ran my fingers through my hair and brushed my teeth, staring back at my inevitability, my obligation, my today.  

I lit a cigarette.  I tied my shoes.  We gripped each other goodbye, I smelled you for the sake of reminding, and lingered long enough to acknowledge another deeper departure.

I saved my sorrow for the long road home.  In my rearview mirror, I watched the pavement crack and spread, a fissure in the landscape in the bloodbath of the sun.