It Will Be

There aren’t even the right words for all the feelings I’m having about leaving right now. There aren’t even feelings for all the feelings I am having. I don’t even know how they all fit inside my body. I feel more delicate than ever, but you keep saying you’re so proud of me. And I am too. Leaving is never easy business. It feels wrong to walk away from so many things I love, and if I wasn’t the kind of person who loves so much I might be scared I’ll never find this again. I am scared. 

In the last three weeks here I have searched under every rug and looked in every tree, street corner, glass of whiskey to face all the damage and greatness I found in these burnt dry hills. There’s fires again, and the sky tastes gray and it feels the same as it did the day I got here three years ago. That me and this me share so much of the same worry right now. 

When I am gone I will write about this place as if it were an island. And I will see my self spin circles around this city, back and forth and up and down and all over the place, sweat soaked and teary eyed and laughing more than some people laugh in a lifetime. Can you even believe how much there was to be had here. 

I will let it all settle and I hope it fills in the cracks along the inside of me. I will think sweetly of this place when I am gone and somewhere new. And it will be so many patio talks on love and good beer, and whiskey melted ice. It will be riding my red bike with no hands through the north end and wondering if there has ever been a place that sounded quite so silent like this and the way the sprinklers turn on in the morning. It is will be river walks and teeth chattered and stale classrooms on campus, and Bruce’s ties, and the smell of fresh printed stories, and the little red house and our round table and drinks after class. It will be the apartment on Jefferson in the early years, those salad years before we knew better than to hurt each other and love each other and do it seven more times over again. It’s the leaking faucet and the tree outside the window and reading my first stories on the cold winter counters while you cook. It’s the drive to hot springs and the windows down and the sound of my roommates voice trickling into the attic. The skylights with snow on them, cooking pizza barefoot and taking out the trash. Morning walks to the coop and bluebird and your smile when you’re working. It’s my wifey. The basement supply closet and laying in the grass outside the cabin, the river and the snake and this past week. 

I’ve made the most wonderful life here. It was all worth it.