I ran away from you to Lake Arrowhead

I didn’t tell you where I was going

I knew I had a 24 hour grace period before you were done making

your film

I went to an aa meeting

And my share read like a tale of a battered housewife

I felt everyone’s eyes on me

The rehab kids in the back row stopped throwing spitballs at

each other and stared at me

I fucking hate my life.

I waited after the meeting in the parking lot for any of the

local ladies

to come up to me

Only one did, Kira.

“I don’t really have much advice for you” she said

I was in over my head

out of my league

In the wrong place wrong season wrong time wrong face

and I knew it

But I didn’t know what to do

You asked me to marry you

You said your mother was dying and you couldn’t fathom your

life without a woman in it.

I was tempted but it didn’t seem like a good enough offer

I wanted more than that

even though I’ve never had anything.

Not one person to call if I changed my dollar in for quarters to

ask what they thought about it.

But there’s always been just a little tiny piece of me inside

the size of a small slice of angel cake that knew

somewhere somehow

That I deserved better than someone like you.

So I got back into my truck in the dark

my little yellow pamphlet with two numbers on it that I would

never call crumpled up

Kira with her local area code and gratefully also her

sponsor, Gail from Palmdale.

I didn’t feel better and I didn’t use the numbers but I thought

that I had been very brave that I did the best I could, sharing

in a big room, tears streaming down my face in my high school

flannel

just to say

“The man that I love hates me.

But it would be easier to stay.”

As the last person’s lights flooded over my windshield

the night became very quiet

and i thought-

If I go back and I end it

How would I handle driving down your street and it becoming a

distant memory

not reality

no longer sweet.

Sweet the way it tastes in my mouth to say your name

sweet like when I was young, driving down those roads before we

were done

before any big battles were lost or won

unbeknownst to everyone

except for you and me.

As Sweet as a junkie’s limited concept of love can be.

I thought cause u were clean u were a lot like me

wanting to be closer to something big and free.

But some people need their secrets

And now my greatest battle will be

this unchained melody

In my heart

From not having you next to me.

To shut the door on the past and step

blindly

into the abyss

no destination intact

the only direction set in the Compass - to move forward.

So I drove

back and forth

on the Rim of the World Hwy

and the beauty of its name reminded me

That I was beautiful

That some things are beautiful for no reason.

Not everyone needs to pretend to love their girlfriend just

because their mother is dying

or because they’re afraid of a change in season…

Anyway

I don’t have a pretty couplet to give resolution to this poem

nothing very eloquent to say

except that I was brave

and it would’ve been easier to stay