To Endure the Burning
The days are getting shorter. Instead of watching the sun rise, the morning drive to work is punctuated by headlights and inside my truck cab I can see my breath all the way to Park Street. Alison Krauss fills the silence, her voice on infinite repeat and it calls back memories of better times. It reminds me of being in my dad's truck, of hard work, of belonging to something greater than myself, of being safe.
I feel alone in a snowstorm, idle on the side of the road. Headlights turn into brake lights as the entire world goes past, I am anchored to the shoulder and feel more pathetic and lifeless with each passing streak of red. The applications on my desk for different futures renew my sense of hope for something better, but I know it's only a first step back onto a path that I abandoned four years ago. It is amazing what we settle for because it's familiar. Four years ago the leaves crunched under my feet when I met you and the cold autumn air against my face helped to conceal my flushed cheeks. It all fell apart so rapidly, and underneath the rubble somewhere there's the spirit that I used to carry, the one that could never be defeated. I catch glimpses of her -- when I'm thirty feet in the air and placing a roof ladder, when my Lieutenant tells me that it's time to replace the black helmet with a yellow one -- and rather than dig her up I think I've got to rebuild. She doesn’t know how to operate the car anymore, so the thing to do is get out and walk. The world breaks everyone, and some grow stronger at the broken places.
The rumble of my truck's engine was the only thing cutting through the autumn dark last night as I made my way to a friend's after EMS training. The world had the pungent-sweet smell of decaying leaves, there were pumpkins on the stoops of the houses I passed and there was that electricity of potential that only exists in Ohio autumn hanging heavily in the air around me. To have been so blessed, I thought. And as soon as the thought passed there were headlights approaching in the passing lane, and the familiar clambor of an old muffler-less engine, a shiver down my spine like a bad omen. That rusty orange filled my rear view mirror and I worried for a moment, about where my truck would be all night, about passing sharks and phone calls that would be made, the cycle of desperation.
And then I thought, how fitting that your truck was travelling the opposite direction of mine. So much like life. And I put it behind me, and I kept driving.
I feel alone in a snowstorm, idle on the side of the road. Headlights turn into brake lights as the entire world goes past, I am anchored to the shoulder and feel more pathetic and lifeless with each passing streak of red. The applications on my desk for different futures renew my sense of hope for something better, but I know it's only a first step back onto a path that I abandoned four years ago. It is amazing what we settle for because it's familiar. Four years ago the leaves crunched under my feet when I met you and the cold autumn air against my face helped to conceal my flushed cheeks. It all fell apart so rapidly, and underneath the rubble somewhere there's the spirit that I used to carry, the one that could never be defeated. I catch glimpses of her -- when I'm thirty feet in the air and placing a roof ladder, when my Lieutenant tells me that it's time to replace the black helmet with a yellow one -- and rather than dig her up I think I've got to rebuild. She doesn’t know how to operate the car anymore, so the thing to do is get out and walk. The world breaks everyone, and some grow stronger at the broken places.
The rumble of my truck's engine was the only thing cutting through the autumn dark last night as I made my way to a friend's after EMS training. The world had the pungent-sweet smell of decaying leaves, there were pumpkins on the stoops of the houses I passed and there was that electricity of potential that only exists in Ohio autumn hanging heavily in the air around me. To have been so blessed, I thought. And as soon as the thought passed there were headlights approaching in the passing lane, and the familiar clambor of an old muffler-less engine, a shiver down my spine like a bad omen. That rusty orange filled my rear view mirror and I worried for a moment, about where my truck would be all night, about passing sharks and phone calls that would be made, the cycle of desperation.
And then I thought, how fitting that your truck was travelling the opposite direction of mine. So much like life. And I put it behind me, and I kept driving.
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