DEPARTURE

"There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go." -Tennessee Williams

My doors remained open years after you left. Friends and lovers. In the doorway, a logjam of stories and memories of stories.

The grandmothers in calico weeping for joy, a hermit uncle who died in the woods, a young boy fleeing Cuba, how mean the streets of St. Louis were to a country boy.

“What color are your socks? What's in your fridge?" I was fracturing into insanity. Your writing exercises glued me back together. You stayed long after most would have left.

“You’re my best friend, didn’t you know that?” I can still see your expression, a little hurt, stunned that I didn't know. I thought then it would always be so...

There, in one corner, your heart beats underneath my hand, sunlight spills over the bed. It's all I ever needed.

There you are, marveling that I came “all the way from somewhere to nowhere” to see you. As if I could have stayed away.

Flotsam and jetsam. The spillover keeps me here, awash in love that no longer has a place to be.

I have tried everything.

I have tried to blast you out…called up tornadoes, brewed hurricanes but it only stirs up more. Fragments fly out of corners and off window ledges....

Look. You are all gone now.

I will give each one of you, each story and each memory of a story its own bubble. Each bubble will float away, burst open and spill out glittering in the sun, dissolve in air. This is how I picture it.

Letting you go.