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02.19.02 - 10:43 p.m. making our way into warrior. an american made car and two curly headed girls forcing blue steel into his small town. an all night car wash, the goodwill, a lumber yard, more churches of christ than i could count. lost. your letter in my lap to deliver. and it had been almost a year since i had seen this town...i said this out loud, as an explanation, and then with a turn of the head and a "huh" to myself that it had been so long since that day that i was sure i was in love. it was warmer then too, and daytime turning into a pinkblue sky and stars in the pocket of dark that was spreading by the time it was over. windows down and nothing on the radio, feet bare and burned, shoes tossed in the back and socks lost at the lake. back road alabama in a green yellow blur, crosses and dogs without leashes, dirt roads and a sun that plugged the trees in, glowing. Two fishing poles that we rendered useless and beer that was warm but still fine. Your eyes fixed on a road youve known since birth and mine closed and memorizing the tilt and sunny places of this place...the sun criss crossing patterns through leaves and off porches, against the back of my mind. Tanned arms across knees and dirt between my toes. And our hair, mine drying curly and wild from skinny dipping, yours finding the slope of two shoulders freckled now, and burned. Every now and then you would point at a schoolhouse in the middle of a field 2nd through 8th grade and bars where you first fist fought over a girl, and where you later had to go to pick up your father and drive him home. You stole the sunglasses i twirled between my front teeth and the glow in the dark ring on my middle finger you bought at a roadside yard sale with a generous gift of $11.50, francie smiled then and watched us leave arm in arm. But tonight a different trip altogether. My friend, in love with you to a far greater extent than i could ever allow myself. Indigo Girls and cigarettes and her ultimatum to you in 6 pages and green ink, in an envelope with your name across the front. I held it in one hand and a beer in the other, pointing anyway i could remember...i discussed landmarks and that cement plant that i thought i might remember. I left out the part about us drying mostly naked on a strangers dock and too much barbeque that we ate under an umbrella. I left out the field we crossed hand in sunburnt hand, and other things. I whistled the theme from Deliverance as we dipped well into the pitch black threat of warrior countryside. You laughed and i wished you didnt have to do this again. But on top of all of that, a selfishness and a vicariousness that i sensed in this letter that most likely said much of what i had felt all those years. It was the flowers he left on my bed that started this whole thing and i felt strange that my anti valentines day party had us 45 minutes away from home sailing down dead end streets in the middle of the night because you couldnt wait to say goodbye. And i understood. And i needed to be a part of it too. I kept testing myself to make sure i was definitely not entirely in your boat and i dont think i am...i left him when he left me. And im a bit harder to tip over now, at least when its him pushing. � 
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