The curves of a Michigan moon hid full behind a Thursday night sky. It was a shame they were concealed by a blanket of rain as the fog began to melt. Because I was in desperate need of something bright to help anchor the darkness of things.
It felt oddly like Autumn.
But I was thinking about Spring.
Beside me, an irregular river flowed north before bending itself sharply west to reach the eastern edge of Lake Michigan. I heard the water rolling off the dam. And I couldn’t help but to wonder if any fish were actually using the ladder to help navigate that transition.
There was no ladder provided for safety or convenience when I shifted my own latitude–a move necessary to adjust my attitude. Because I was dying down there, in that fetid Indiana town named for a field commander who supposedly lost his mind.
Despite the lack of tangible support, or even modest forethought, I merged off the cliff of 69 North and tumbled across the state line in a truck full of typewriters. I had to trust that the universe would provide for me. The tens of dollars I managed to bring north weren’t going to stretch very far.
But, it was the beginning of a grand adventure inside the palm of a mittened state. Probably the last true ridiculous thing I’ll ever get to do in this life.
And I want to make it fucking count.
Maybe I will finally catch the words I have been chasing my whole damn life; maybe I’ll find a girl nice enough to genuinely love me—and not just for what she can steal. Maybe I’ll even stumble my way into being an example, instead of exemplifying the fuzzy caricature of a whiskey-soaked, typewritten cliché.
But then, examples aren’t supposed to get nocturnally drunk, sitting beside dams, in an inhospitable city. Better decisions must be made if I ever hope to earn that referent label. Choices have to shift towards being less destructive. No matter how much the memories hurt. Or how alone I felt, sitting there in the rain under the bare branches of an oak skeleton, crying about a question.
Those were supposed to be tomorrow’s problem.
Even though I am running out of tomorrows.
Over the rush of the water I heard the whispered melodies of a polyjamerous girl. Her gentle symphonies clashed noticeably against a manufactured tik-toked world. But in a way that I could appreciate. And understand. Because I value the noises born when things collide.
She asked me the fucking question; I wrote her the fucking answer.
Then breath hung in the damp air; the bottle poured hollow. From a suspended bridge stretching out over laughing water, an empty shell fell.
Just another unreturnable Michigan castaway, bobbing in the waves.
