On The Road To Find Out

It's one of those moments where you meet someone, and your life flashes before your eyes.

I've had this once in my life with the often stated Lovely, and the thought of another conundrum has not scared me so much as placed me in my chair for a good portion of the evening,

thinking.

Lovely has followed such a winded timeline, that I forgot what it feels like to be at the beginning again.

I'm not sure if I am starting on another unearthly realism, or simply looking at my own reflection.

But the first time I felt the waves of Lovely's voice reach me, I saw myself old and content.

And I've felt that again with the Paradox. These types of roads always seem to follow a line of gender eradication and revaluation of where my life will lead.

But here again I sit, pensively biting the backs of my crossed hands with the elbows on the desk.

This is a different world.

The Paradox has no idea. But then again, you don't have those kinds of moments with just one side of the wall.

I suppose I will just sit here for the remainder of this thought, and wake up in the morning to find my daily life back again.

The road is there though, and I can always take time for a walk.

Monty Got A Raw Deal

This patch thing is not going to be pretty.

I was born of the tobacco. A memory distinctly rests in my brain of a four year old Grace, standing outside the cab of the pickup truck my father had for a moment, learning how to rhythmically play a pack of cigarettes against my hand to push the tobacco together.

Marlboro Reds, no less.

My father was the cowboy killer, my mother was the Gold Marlboro box. She eventually quit and I grew up in a house of echoing warnings.

Until I went to college. I found myself in January standing outside with Quixote, stressed more than I knew with my EMT knowledge, asking for a cigarette.

And one the next day.

And then I was a smoker.

Sunday mornings I would wake up to an empty cardboard box and a little less air in my lungs.

Summer mornings included driving on 95 with a cigarette out the window and a bottle of Febreeze poised to mask the smell with flowers and exhaust fumes.

My mother was good about it. She disapproved, but what could she possibly say to the younger version of herself repeating a similar mistake?

My father didn't know. I didn't want to give him that pleasure.

And so back to the college that Marlboro pays for, smoking in between breaks from the car that tobacco supplied.

Note the irony yet?

I love smoking. It is in my blood. I grew up with ashtrays and Philip Morris stock quotes.

But my career is pressing in. How can I be an advocate for a healthy birth if I am constantly ducking out of the building for a few minutes only to return smelling like ash?

good effort or not, I am not pleased with this outcome.

The patch on my back feels like the rapture is about to occur.

And I'm going to be stuck here on earth with countless cigarettes and no more babies.

In My Place

The smell of the beginning of October pulls things out of your head that you haven't felt in an earthly rotation.

The other morning, dragged out of a hungover bed to the sound of a number I didn't recognize, I found myself talking to a ghost.

Lovely had decided that he was alive again.

His other half had dropped out on him. He was everywhere and nowhere and talking to me.

It wasn't his number. He was unreachable except for that moment. I hung up and stared at that dusty box gold box in the corner.

It was the first morning of fall. I was fourteen, sitting on my porch steps again.

That fucking porch.

I dealt with it, stayed away from those pictures of him, and considered it a random witching hour that had simply momentarily raised the dead.

That is, until I found myself standing in a loud kind of quiet hallway, where the dust dances in the sunlight against the background sound of expensive learning. He had called again. Another number, another exorcism.

And this was one I could call back.


And so here I sit, feeling like I've been resurrected back into the month that is in my blood.

Here I sit, at the edge of a very large circle that has taken years to draw into the leaves.

And here I sit. Terrified. I thought I was done. I had put that photo back into its box.

But now that number is staring at me like that house down the street used to.

For the first time, I know that I'm not the only one who can't let go.

Perhaps we're both ghosts.