You drive the highway, feel life pull you in different directions, but his the strongest. A magnet, true north—all other directions relate to this. Night darkens around you both until the green lights of the dash illuminate his face, and his eyes become eternal. The moment stands infinite and fleeting all at once, and you think to yourself, “How long can this possibly last?” You can’t imagine anything less than forever.
When did you first learn fear? When did you first learn the pain of departure? Is there any way back to trusting?
You park at the diner and remember a night four weeks (a lifetime?) ago that found you sitting on that curb, talking truth in drunken slurs. Inside, you have chicken fingers. Twenty-seven years old, you have recently decided you will not partake in something you will not enjoy to its fullest. This has repercussions—listening to one song on repeat for hours on end, sitting by the lake in the middle of a storm, passing on invitations to events that seem less than life changing. You have lost the inhibition to say “yes” to everything uninteresting. You have lost the art of faking. Sitting across from him, laughing at the way you jockey the truth across the table, you realize it is not a loss after all.
The night reaches the point where time becomes meaningless. Yesterday disappeared. Tomorrow hasn’t yet arrived. This is what matters. The food has settled into a comforting heaviness, and you feel more grounded in this Jersey diner than you have ever felt in a pew with the Truth in your hands. The laughter—his and yours together—plays over like a hymn, and you wonder about heaven.
a scribble of jo 