I Grew Up With the Road.

It's been far too long since I've written. A word hiatus. I've been unavailable, immersed in clear glasses and electronic haze. My time allotted has not allowed my mind to pulse through my fingertips and into these hard black keys. I've missed it, I've missed this typewriter remedy. I've been up, up too late. Not insomniac filled days of holding Ella and watching Joan Rivers sell jewelry, but up late nonetheless. Divulging with warm friends. Mother keeps saying "It's nice to see you happy." I smile to myself and cross my legs twice, wrapping them around my ankles. It's always unexpected, you know? Bad timing seems to be redundant, but why fight it? I catch myself beaming during mindless tasks. Lining up my teapots, gazing at blue flames in steel factories, sitting on the driver's lap. It's all a mess, a kettle full of broken china I'm trying to mend. I'm waiting patiently to fall apart. To split. To be spliced open, naked and natural, pulsing. But in the meantime, I'll remain here with lemon eyes, basking in chocolate blankets, following frozen satellites through open blinds.

I escaped. I ran away not long ago. We drove, and drove. I grew up with the road, singing Charlie Darwin through the echos. For seven hours I gazed mindlessly out alabaster windows at windblown sagebrush and snow enveloped hills. At frozen ponds. I wanted nothing more than to crawl out into them, invade the winged migration. To lie there motionless, throbbing with the callous water, wondering how much water the gray clouds would hold. But I remained on the road, encompassed in the warmth of familiar voices and hearty laughter, saving my rebellion for a later time. "I need you to look forward, Mad. Look ahead." Breathlessly, I searched, the corners of my lips uncontrollably rising. Watching, counting. Feeling, clearing. Seventy eight windmills, seventy eight. Backward glances out the glass as we drove away. Nurture, nature, and then the blackness came. Even then, I could see them. Miles of synchronized red lights. Hello, hello, we feel it too.