It was a February tease of a premature Michigan spring. A dishonest one. Because like most things here in the land of misunderstood Mittened madness, it wasn’t really real anyway.
Just another Clinton County night spent pretending to be human. But at least it was a night warm enough to finally melt away all the fucking snow. Erasing all the ice clinging stubbornly to this 517 speed dialed insanity. And teasing a springed hope from all the inconvenient mud.
But somehow, things inside remained rigidly frozen.
And that left me aching for a different kind of thaw.
Instead, I was rewarded with only an unseasonably foggy West Clark Road. The one lined with all the damn deer. Those tragic creatures cursed with a stubborn stupidity compelling them to lunge and charge randomly at moving vehicles. Their fucktard silhouettes forcing knuckles white squeezing a grip on a black plastic wheel. Their hooved dangers demanding instant sobriety when slingshotting down between those wavering lines. The familiar ones, right where the end of runway of 28 Left pokes out.
Because they hit me once before. And I didn’t have the patience for the bloody inconvenience of being hit again.
Not when echoes of overheard barroom conversations filled my head—our little Old Town coffee shop had shuttered its doors. A terrible bit of news gleaned from an unfamiliar patron getting midnight shitfaced there with the rest of us.
But my inebriation on that random Hideaway Thursday had been uncharacteristically reasonable for a change. And that still legal to drive clarity somehow simmered over into a strange sort of nostalgia. One which unfortunately allowed me the ability to actually feel things.
And a quick inventory proved that everything still fucking hurt.
I couldn’t catch my breath; I couldn’t sit still through the ill-advised pours of self-medicating numbness. Pounding down those last rounds of green Irish glass. For no other reason than they reminded me of home. And temporarily muted the ache in my heart for Galway.
I knew I would never get my fill. So there wasn’t much point in clinging to the familiarity of another chairs up closing time.
I instead bled myself out on broken Michigan roads.
Because I didn’t want to end up another barroom cliché; because I wanted to try and find the smiles again.
The smiles we shared standing alone. Together again. With the bricked row houses standing silent witness to our bonding. The one sparking that warm spring night, hugged away under a streetlight’s unifying glow. The night we just couldn’t bring ourselves to say goodbye. Because we couldn’t face the agony of separation.
I miss the smiles shared back when everything in Old Town was still new. And not yet fully explored. The tucked away nature of that bohemian neighborhood somehow mirroring the growing depth of the relationship.
Running free together, just like the Grand, hiding behind the pines. Walking hand in hand, down across the creaking river trail planks. Picnicking on foxy flannel with coffee and typewriters by a garden of roses. Kissing under a mighty oak standing sentinel on that little hill down where all the fish are supposedly laddered back up.
But that was just the first of many Michigan lies.
I didn’t know then that a great many more were yet to be born.
But that’s the ugly part of the story.
Maybe like the doors of that now shuttered coffee house, it is better left closed. Because the things in this life that are actually worthwhile generally aren’t destined to last very long.
And it’s impossible to hold on forever to ghosts.
The only certainty left here in the middle of a heartless Michigan is the threat of more snow.
I can already smell it blowing over from the big lake.
Because the winter here lingers. Far beyond what could ever be considered reasonable. Or healthy. But that’s just the suffering nature of the dying season. And no amount of whiney writing will ever change that fundamental truth.
I stood outside that locked door; I saw memories reflected back in that defunct coffee shop window.
I flipped a leather collar up against the rising winds. Lit a crumpled smoke behind curled hands. Exhaled my poisonous peace into the world.
And then I turned my back on Old Town.
To finally go and find something new again…
