It’s nights like this, the ink black ones, that keep me in too long. Like a heavy black cloth has been dropped over the house and you can’t see out, no moon, or stars or circling satellites. I sit here until the walls start to move toward me, the eyes in the photo on the mantle start to move as I do – jittery, shaking. The TV might as well be blue screen. Some guy trying repeatedly to sell you something you don’t want, that you can never want, that you decided a long time ago you didn’t want. He still keeps on knocking.
I dream of a drive in my car to the country. I dream of ladies au naturel. I dream of a river cutting through a mountain. Thousands of years. I dream of what the land looked like before that river, and if the fish were still there. I dream occasionally of a love lost.
After the war my father returned to his hometown and became stoney. My grandfather, after his war, walked 300 miles back home. And the great grandfather, after the great war, came back to a woman he was sure had left him long ago. She was waiting on the front porch in an apron and did not recognize him until he was right on top of her.
After this war,I am going to find a river. I am going to find a river that I can follow and float. It could be any river. It might be the one from childhood where I played, innocently, and hatched plans for revolution. It could be a river that has yet to make it’s knife-like descent through the Earth – a new river. I am the first ever to see this river, and it took a war to make it. It took a war to put me on it. It took a war to bring me home to you.
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