The things that used to hurt your heart now harden it, and the shit that used to burden your soul is now in the wind like dried and fallen foliage. Plans that once were have evaporated as the water that collects at the base of our steps does after its brief residence. The lyrics of Led Zeppelin's "Babe I'm gonna leave" plays on repeat in my mind as it did the very day that I left my ex, and though that was a hard decision to make in the moment, it's one that was made, and one that I had to stick by, even if that meant masturbating for a month or two. I look out my car window and the life that speeds by me at thirty-five miles per hour seems to slow down. The children playing, the birds flying, diving from elevated positions in the sky, pulling up just before their impact with the earth are seen, as well as the grown folk inattentively watching their children from behind glassy eyes and kicked up feet while a sweating glass of gin and tonic rest on their side table. A ball rolls into traffic, and a young child running stops just short of the road, only to watch his spherical comrade explode under tire. At this age his head only hangs low for a brief moment before he bounces back and finds a new source of excitement to surge thru his veins, and to stretch a smile across his face. As we get older those bounce back moments that were so brief as a child linger on a bit longer, as the deep bone bruise does while it changes color and undergoes its healing metamorphosis. All life seems to be connected, and though the lessons that you learned as a child were similar to the ones you learn as an adult, their meaning now takes on a larger significance. Anymore I just know to take it one day at a time, look at the road in front of me as it comes rolling, and to turn the volume up on my issues, because they'll all work their way out in the end. I'm very sure of it.
Photo: Courtesy of Damian Gerlach
