Over
I thought it was over before when a tumor the size of a fist rose up in my chest, dead center.
I walked out on the porch and wept, not for where I was going. I didn’t care. But for what I was leaving undone, for love withheld out of stubbornness or doubt, for every untouched spring and unwept tear. Well, it still isn’t done.
But on summer nights I sometimes sit alone by the open window in an old yellow chair, its left front leg chewed down by a dog, a Labrador Retriever, mostly Lab anyhow, and a damn fine dog at that.
After fifteen years she knew me better than I knew myself, I guess, though that may not be so, but loved me better than I loved her, and I loved her a lot. And so now is that done?
Well, it still isn’t clear, but every now and then a car comes past on the gravel road that runs out from town, and it sounds familiar, like it’s turning, maybe up the drive, but it doesn’t. And I wonder about the crickets, why they always sound so loud just afterward, and the night air filling the juniper branches so silent and still till my head goes completely empty and I still can’t see where it ends.
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