The Driving Rain

I wonder what it's like now, that life. The smell of ketones on breath and the stench of drakkar noir why is it sadder to me than it is ridiculous? How at times you would really try to make a plan for the future and how those were maybe the worst moments. Worse than the three AM staggering footsteps falling into bed cheap vodka nightmares. Worse because it meant that you really believed you were capable of something more in those moments. Believed but would never follow through, no matter how many chances. I had this dream last night, after I heard about it -- you -- Rosie was dragging me by the leash all over my grandmother's yard. Out of control. Maybe that's the best way for it to be summed up and the dream was meant to be a reminder for the simple blessings in life. How good it is now, how different. How you can never know that unless you have been through the opposite. But I do remember playing football with you in front of that decaying house in Elyria, it seems like so much longer than two years ago. How I would drive past abandoned corn fields winter dust swirling in the Saturday morning sky, for just a few hours with you because it seemed like maybe there was finally hope. It's such a beautiful flaw of the human condition, how readily we give our common sense over to hope! The worst part of my life. You will only cause pain in the hearts of those who love you. And I can finally see how lucky I am to have escaped their ranks. You're breaking your own crown. I cannot believe that was my life. So grateful for the juxtaposition of now.