Jagged Vacance

It always takes place in the cemetary. This time I knew they were in there, small apartment like a pine box there were padlocks on the storage units in front and the cars were in there, like a mobile impound. I had Linus and Rex was loose and more than anything I just didn't want him to come out and see me. And later my father and I were standing atop a peak in one of the clearings on High Divide, and I could see for miles, miles, miles. The juxtaposition of the two places, how fear can creep into your heart. The absolute lifetimes that exist between events like that, how you don't even notice their passing. There is this one specific moment that I remember with you, we were lying on our backs in the park behind the Vine Street house and we were talking about us just buying the place, it was one of those perfect Ohio autumn days crisp yellow leaves against the sapphire blue of the sky and I could see for miles, miles, miles. It is the only time I remember from that period of my life in which I felt we could be something more than isolated alcoholics. Those moments come all the time now and easily, the ones that fill you with hope for the future and promise and the deep knowledge of being loved. That you really don't have to go through life alone. And to think back to that girl in the grass how many Septembers ago, it makes me want to cradle her up and love her so strongly because of the road she doesn't know exists. But that she makes it, to know how that chapter ends! And I want that for you, too. But it will always seem impossible until you get there, and you just need the will to muscle through and how rock-bottom sad it is that that is what keeps you away from it. The glory.