One Day it is All Going to End

Fifty-three miles into Tennessee, the drone of the car engine is beginning to lull him to sleep. Mountains line the horizon, and he hasn't crested the biggest of them yet. He's passed the billboards announcing his arrival into hick country—buy ammo here; Jesus is LORD—but he doesn't know where he is yet. He's halfway between nowhere and somewhere else, approaching exit 74, looking out for the bridge lined with lamp-posts, and the Sonic, and the Walgreens. 

He will unfold from the driver's seat to stretch and gaze at the north Tennessee sky, because he didn’t crash his car into the embankment outside his neighborhood when he was seventeen. Maybe it’s a miracle he didn’t. He wrote lines that year, about how only God can decide it’s our time to die, when he knew himself to be the only being who could make it stop. Every day, numb hands on the steering wheel, he chose asphalt over oblivion. 

Two-hundred and thirty-six miles south of Portland, Tennessee, he could climb that embankment and lay down a bouquet of tall grass for the teenager whose dream was never realized. He could leave a memorial to the desire that ended as silently as it lived, without anyone taking notice of its disappearance.

One day it is all going to end. It will end quietly, marked by signs without substance. An inflatable rubber duck tethered at the side of the highway. Drive-through fries in the passenger seat. A left turn onto TN 109 north.

I am free of it

The best way to burn a photo is to start from the center. 

When lit from the edge, the flame burns itself out before it reaches her face, her eyes that shimmer at me on the other side of the camera. It cuts parts away but stops short of catharsis. I muster the courage to dip her back into the candle flame. The paper crumbles from my hand into tentative ash. 

I burn the next one from the center. It pops and distorts, beyond salvage long before it crumbles to ash. I light the rest off of that photo, one on top of the other like a palm-sized bonfire, my only source of light and heat. 

I get to the birthday card she drew for me, and then I say I can't do it. Surely, I have to keep this, surely, but the writing on the back makes my organs contort as much as the thought of burning it. I hold its edge up to the candle, memorizing her words as the fire consumes. It hurts. The flames reach my fingers before I let go. 

I cannot have this back. I will never get this back. Even if, somewhere, some impression of it remains, the thing that mattered is gone. 

Tentatively, I admit: I am free of it. 

New Year, I remain.

11/14/2024. 

If you kill yourself,

your cat will miss you.

And even if no one comes to your funeral,

She will wander the hall, 

Reaching under the bathroom door,

Crying 

Where are you?

I love you.

Come back to bed. 

 --

commentary on this one is that my journal fell open to this page while I was looking for my goals from 1/1/2025. I'm still recovering from the events that made me write this, but on the brighter side I still have a cat who loves me more than anything.  

It's hard to be open about struggling and having struggled. If I expose my weak spots, I fear people will come for them. 

In 2026 I'm going to write more. And get a glasses prescription that isn't five years old. And become something built from joy instead of living in the negative space of things I am not. And I want to find friends again. 

New year, and the central pieces of me remain.  

Love you,

Laine.