March 27
At a Ramada in 100 Mile House, BC, the snow falling hard outside, the light in the room diffuse & soft over the maroon carpet & gold walls, a kind of dark womb here. Drove up from Seattle en route to Alaska, my heart hanging unspeakably heavy in my chest the entire time, my words swallowed whole in that emanating hurt. I don’t know what to do without her. I speak her name & there is no reply.
I recognize the thrill in this, though it is something more like an idea right now, a ghost, a kind of light flickering in some figured distance obscured by a briefly dark & muted landscape. We built this road & now we must follow it. I know that it ultimately will yield wonderful things for us both, but to look her in the eyes & say I love you & say goodbye & drive away into some silent ether was to feel some deep rend, some fissure burst wide. & now here I am, a hotel in a hard snow, Willa’s eyes hopeful, widely scanning every sound for evidence of someone who will not come. Permit me this, a moment’s sadness, before I awe at the world anew. Or permit the awe in sadness, its deep cleave, the shock of the self in earnest conversation with itself. That we fare forward after all.
I recognize the thrill in this, though it is something more like an idea right now, a ghost, a kind of light flickering in some figured distance obscured by a briefly dark & muted landscape. We built this road & now we must follow it. I know that it ultimately will yield wonderful things for us both, but to look her in the eyes & say I love you & say goodbye & drive away into some silent ether was to feel some deep rend, some fissure burst wide. & now here I am, a hotel in a hard snow, Willa’s eyes hopeful, widely scanning every sound for evidence of someone who will not come. Permit me this, a moment’s sadness, before I awe at the world anew. Or permit the awe in sadness, its deep cleave, the shock of the self in earnest conversation with itself. That we fare forward after all.
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