742

<Are they ever, really?>
<Ever what?>
<Love songs.>

How far is it today? How long will I have to sacrifice this passive lack of pain?

When I get to the school house, will the sun set on me and will I be able to put my thoughts, such as they are, to bed?  Maybe I’ll make it around that half-mile concrete track with the lightning going up my heel and hitting me in the gut enough  times it stops. Maybe if I go on to the football  field and run twenty yard suicides, maybe it would pound you back into blackness and death.

Should I lean into the wind and climb up the river bluffs and follow the languid lowliness to the bridge?  I could run up and down that one killer hill, sprint up it like a goat until my quads ignite.  I could make it a whole night. Me, the hill, the stars, and after a while, not you.  I could run up to Spyglass and look down over the world and know that I won today.

Could I make it up to my brother’s house? Six miles of uphill.  Seven if I take the long way.  Ten if I make up a longer way.  I could run into the night, with the falling black to comfort me and the rain that’s coming out of the desert south to cool me.  When my wet clothes form a noose and my joints turn to rust, I could lay down alone. Finally alone.

What if none of it works?  How far will I run? How long will it take? Will my knees survive it, or my ankles abide it? You’d be the trees along the field and the water in the river and the rain falling.

I could give all that I have and all that I am to you.  Is that what it will take? I could offer myself, or whatever passes for it, in the rain and sun and in exertion and upon the alter of the burning desert rocks and the crucible of these goddamn runs for you and sometimes to you.  When I walk down the streets where we’ve been and drive the cards you once rode in, is it sacrifice enough that I can think of you?

Should I dream of you?  Should I tell you when I do? There is no escape, it seems, but that we both disappear from everywhere and all time at once.  Is that what it would take? That I would disappear.

All we have is all that we are and no other life is allowed us but this.

How far will I have to run for you today?