I try again. Just go back to sleep, I tell myself; you’ll be meat by noon. Today’s another twelve hour day. Maybe more. But the squeeze is there and I can’t. Can’t sleep. And if I don’t at least rest, I’ll lose my mind. So I lay there until I can’t anymore and I get up.

I’ve always known what hard work is. I’ve worked much harder, in shorter bursts. I’ve worked long hours at times. I’ve had responsibility, and worn many hats. I’ve worked in a hard hat, a cowboy hat, ball cap, a bandana, and a helmet. I’ve worn the employee hat, the manager hat and the free agent hat. But I have never worn all the hats at once.

I am so tired.

I am on a runaway horse, flying by the seat of my pants.

No, really, I am on two horses at once. One is a runaway, and the other I have resorted to kicking the shit out of to keep it moving, and I am trying not to do the splits, which I never learned to do. I feel torn in two, every day, or torn in four or eight or however many different directions I am flying in at once at any given time and I swear I am riding as fast as I can.

I am barely hanging on.

My day ends and I feel like I’ve been to war. Warmth, food, kindness, all like seeing rainbows after being underground; miracles. I have maybe an hour, two. There is not much time for those little miracles, because there is only time for things that are barely getting done, and just have to be. And then I sleep, and wake with the squeeze in my chest, the hammering heart, the bone dry mouth, the fear I will just not make it no matter how hard I try.

There is no time now to ponder, muse, reflect. There are no days I just follow my words to my heart.

Words flow from me all day and every day. Words that get me where I need to be to survive. I think on my feet and I use my words and people listen to me so I try to choose them well. I am sincere and creative in my approach.

But I can barely write an email now. I am so tired of the talking and all the words, I cannot even write. I cannot join two thoughts together for that. Maybe not even two sentences. All I can write is this.

It would seem to me easier to stop having a struggle and just say I can’t. I can’t write. Maybe simpler to quit, to stop torturing myself with my imagined need to write. I chose my life as it is right now, and for a good reason. One cannot always do all things. There is a season for everything. Perhaps it is not the season for writing, for me, for now. Maybe what I am doing really will take everything I have, and more, and there is just not room for anything else. Sacrifices must be made. If it were easy to do what I am doing, more people would do it. It’s not.

And yet, here I am. I don’t want to quit. I can’t quit. Neither can I quit what I spend all my time doing. Because I do have a dream, and dreams are what I live on.

Everything is a matter of perspective. Do I sound unhappy? Well, some days I really am. Some days I want to close the doors. Go ahead, fine me for breaking the rules. I just don’t care, because I am exhausted beyond all reason. It’s too much. Too much for one person. I want to quit it all, give it back; turn the headache over to someone else.

I don’t have the time, resources, finances to do what I am doing in any of the prescribed ways for doing such a thing and I’m just worn out by my own creative ways of making up for that.

And then a magic thing happens. A person comes with a story, and I know they are coming to me by no accident. They bring something that I’ve never seen before, and the something has a story too, and of course I have to know the story. I fall in love with the thing, the story, and the person. I wouldn’t miss this for the world. I have to hang around to see what happens next.

Someone else finds this thing, falls in love with it too, wants to know the story, and then has to have the thing. I am now part of the story, and this is how I make my living, one story at a time.

I don’t always tell the whole story, nor do I usually really know the whole story at all. Sometimes I have no vital information at all, but that creates a mystery which I am happy to segue to another story. After all, possibilities are just my game.

I’m never dishonest, but hey, I was a waitress in another life, and I can read your mind before you know yourself which dessert you really do want after all. This is an art, trust me. How good would I be if I didn’t try at all to anticipate what you might fall in love with, and help you along so you might realize what you must do? Like I said, I’m always honest; I’m just helping people be happy. I’m kind of like a matchmaker.

I’m enjoying, just a bit, the way I’m beginning to be the “go to girl” for some folks’ favorite things. What a hoot. Do I know where to find it? Do I even know what it is? Not necessarily, but I might find it anyway. I often do. Even if I can’t profit, it’s the possibility that draws me, and the mystery; the magic of finding just the thing asked for that makes me feel like I’ve won something.

I’m living the dream. I am a business owner. I wear the Boss hat now and I don’t punch a time clock or ask other people what they want me to do. I can’t be fired and I can make up rules and write my own contracts and have a cigarette whenever I please, if I can ever find the time. I eat, sleep, breathe this business and I worry all the time how I will pay the next mind-numbing power bill or even buy the next boat-load of light bulbs and tubes I will shortly need yet again. I borrow from this, cover from that, float what I have to. I have no idea how this will ever work, but I am the mistress of my own destiny. I have bought myself a job. If I might fail from working my ass off and receiving no pay-off, let it at least be for myself. I have possibilities!

Every day I meet someone who thought they had a “future”, who went to work every working day for a decade or two, until one day they went to work and were told their job had been eliminated. And most everyone else I know has lost their ability to work for themselves as well. They have lost homes, assets, credit, bonding, licenses, equipment, and sometimes self respect; they chase work and leave town to find it. They take what they can find and put up with conditions they would not have before. Most of them just cannot find work, or only the most sporadic kind. Everyone is insecure. Things have become simple, basic, and the survivors get creative.

I am a survivor. No, I don’t know what I’m doing. Yes, I would like to go back to an easier time, when I could work as I needed to and have a “life”. Yes, I am in over my head. No, I don’t enjoy this every day. Yeah, you will get really sick if you work all the time, don’t eat or sleep enough and get really stressed out. Whatever, that was the way it went down, that’s what it took. If I knew what I was doing, I’d have not done it.

But News Flash: there is no Play It Safe way left. There is no “I want to have a life” anymore. This IS my life. There are no avenues that do not include big risks. There is nothing to be gained by not trying, and if you’re going to try then try with all your might, and don’t be a quitter. Against some of my own limits, I’m making new ones, and I haven’t quit.

I do realize that most do not understand if I say sometimes it’s just too hard, that I’m overwhelmed, that I don’t know if I have what it takes. They are visibly distressed to hear me say I don’t have the means to do this and would like to walk away every other day. They think “business owner” and assume solvency, competence, and consistent income. They don’t understand even if I tell them, that I’m not in a position of any glory and I’m not “getting all the money.” They don’t know that “success” for me today might be staying open another month. I realize that all I do is scare some people when I tell them how close to the bone this is, and that some other people may only judge me stupid for taking such a risk with so little means or know-how.

I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut. They don’t need to know, and only those closest to me know the truth.

So there it is. This is all I have; running on empty with no resources and little experience and a bit of nerve. Not as much as people think. And every day is a ride I wonder if I will live through. There’s no time to regroup, and most of the suggestions people have given me for improving my business are things I struggle to not snort at. They have no clue that it’s simply not possible, that anyone would dare to do this without the means to replace, repair, hire, buy, and borrow from a bank. They have good ideas, and I file them away for future reference.

Am I crazy? A fool? Some days I think so. On sleepless nights I definitely think so. And then I go back and do it again the next day.

I want to write. I can’t find my magic place, the place I used to write from. There’s nothing in me right now but this runaway horse, and the one I keep kicking along. Maybe I will have to write about the ride, even if I write it badly.  And if  I am willing to do that, I can always write about the Dream. I’m living it.

But what if one parts before then?

Do you die, so you can make it right? So you don’t have to break a vow?

Life goes on—that’s the brutal fact you just can never get around, not alive anyway. It did for me, no matter how long I grieved. It went on around me, while I felt dead. I wanted to be dead. Still, it went on.

I lived, and found out one can’t live and not be alive. Least I can’t. So, I began to live, tired of dying.

I didn’t replace you. I found a new life, a new love. Something more than what I was missing, and finally I didn’t miss it anymore. I didn’t miss you. I didn’t want what I’d had.

What I had missed was what I’d thought we’d had, cruelly ripped away from me with a scar put in it’s place. A scar everyone could see. A scar of ugly self hate, slow to heal at all, festering with the delusion that I was deserving of the abuse you gave. But what we really had was just a chapter in a story—your story, made up along the way to fit your needs. Your needs, disguised as ours. You lied about that more than anything else, and you lied about almost everything.

You left me with a sawed off stump, my amputated ego hanging by shreds of aching skin.

In the words of an old song we’ve both heard, “I Wouldn’t Treat a Dog” the way you treated me.

The magnitude of raw hurt I felt for years may have made it difficult for me to trust again, to really love and give myself to anyone. But it didn’t mean I wouldn’t, eventually. I did.

Till death do us part.

But you see, that died; I died, who you were to me died. I grieved, died, lost another chunk of myself here and there as time went on—the old rotting illusion of our marriage would shrivel and fall away, just drop off in chunks whenever I least expected. New little deaths, over and over. And by the time they finally all fell off I was so sick of the disease of them that I wanted them to go, even while it was still painful to let them go. And it usually was. Pieces of my identity went along. My belief system went along. My hope went along. And my ability to fall in love went along as well. So I imagined.

But know something here; I wasn’t really dead. Only pieces and parts of me, the pieces that you could still touch, the pieces you’d told me were me. Well, they’re not me.

I’ve spent some time backtracking, walking parallels of paths I took after you left me broken and bleeding. I didn’t set out to follow these old times, more they came to me, and called me out. Only after the fact can I see that they did so because I was finally ready to give all of myself to someone. It was necessary to see where I’d been since you changed how I saw love. And it was shocking how many wrong turns I made just trying to distance myself from what happened. Just trying to heal.

I visited those old spaces, places, loves, and found quickly that whatever stray parts of me were still laying about lost fit handily in a basket, nothing more than I could carry, although the basket seemed really large at the time. Later when I picked up the basket, it felt small and looked hardly a thing to hold so much woe, yet it was the same basket. And it was easily set down.

Finally one day all those stray, misshapen, fallen apart pieces, they were all gone. The little basket was just empty. I felt naked, and surprisingly light. Uncertain, too young to be the age that I am, I stepped up to my life. And love was waiting for me. I didn’t know I was waiting for it too. Sometimes we have to die a little, in order to really live. Life goes on. Life begins anew.

One day, so many years a part of me, the sliver decided to leave my body, or at least begin to. Now that might have been a little painful. There was some swelling, and eventually, a bit of a point emerged. I think it freaked me out more than anything. Glass put there by an event so very long past, and now so unreal, I could not get comfortable with the hard evidence of what might otherwise seem easy to deny, or at least ignore, and pretend to forget.

The time came when the sliver protuded enough that it had to come out. I was able to extract it with tweezers, still imagining it might be something besides what it was. Glass. Glass that could only be there by the force that put it there.

The sliver was long, sharp, and clean as a whistle. I had perfect vision then and took a good long look at it. I marveled at the way it had suvived in my flesh in one piece for so many years, and at it’s size. Just huge. It was really impressive. I turned it over several times, pondered it’s origin, and then saved it somewhere now long lost to me. I know eventually I disposed of it. I knew it would be too ironic to find it poked into myself again by forgetting where I’d hidden it. Just because I needed to look at it for a while, didn’t mean I had a wish to hang onto it. So away it went.

A quart sized Coca Cola bottle; they used to make them that way; all glass, and heavy. The bottoms were thick.

I never saw it coming, and don’t remember raising my hand to my head to protect it, and yet I did just that. The part of my hand injured showed such. It didn’t happen some other way. But I never saw it and I never felt a thing. And then again, maybe the memory is just gone or never was there at all. Shock can make things that way.

Another sliver has considered now moving, perhaps is even ready for the tweezers. For all I know it has just passed clean out of me, I don’t really know. But for so long it was “just there”. If I ever spoke of it I did in monotone, matter of fact. I would at least register the look on another’s face and note either horror or disbelief and occasional simple confusion. I learned to say nothing. I suppose not everyone shrugs off the news that someone they know has survived a terror, and most don’t want to know. For most people, it’s only interesting in the movies.

I don’t remember everything. The memories I do have are sometimes murky, shadowed. And some are sharp as broken glass. The sharpest ones I live with, like I lived with the sliver. Not painful, just “there”. The murky ones, they’re the ones that bring the shadows. I didn’t think they had slivers, until now. I can’t see them when they come out, “long, sharp, and clean as a whistle.” But I feel them moving, emerging. Why does it sometimes take so long? When I no longer need to remember, why is it time now? Truly, I am okay. I don’t care if I ever remember more, and don’t really want to. If a sliver is fine where it is, why try to dig it out? I put myself through all that long ago, and finally understood that it’s okay if I can’t remember, it’s ok to live with a sliver. If the sliver’s a problem, it will let you know…and may just emerge on it’s own when it’s ready.

After all this time, I guess another piece of glass must leave me.

I didn’t know the thing would follow me here. I thought I was safe from its nose, always sniffing the wind and watching for movement, any movement. I hid in plain sight and moved slowly, so as not to call attention. After awhile, it had been so long I assumed I was forgotten. Wouldn’t you have? Years went by and the signs all pointed to the same thing-I was safe. No longer a hunted thing, of no particular interest to the one who watched.

What would you have done? I couldn’t stop living forever.

Man, was I wrong. Of course I was wrong. These things don’t forget, they never just quit. That would be like losing and one thing’s for sure, winning is everything. I’d given up the idea of that long ago, had settled for survival, but then I’d gotten tired of that and reached for something more.

I guess I forgot myself and who I’d been. I bought into the idea that freedom was my birthright, once I’d had a good taste of it myself. And you know, it is. But dance with the Devil just once, and you might have a hard time ever convincing him and his ilk that you are your own, ever again. They wait.

I’d danced to that darkness once, alone I thought, but of course I was not alone when my eyes opened in that dark. The thing was right there beside me, his hand sliding up my dress. It reminds me now of the one time I fell asleep at the wheel and eyes open, drove clear off the road. I guess I’d have to say I wasn’t really asleep, but in a kind of hypnosis. Leaving the road, I willed myself back at the last moment, but found it hard to resist the sweet slide to oblivion. Like the overwhelming urge to sleep, the drift insisted that I just let go.

The dance was the same-a demand to let go and just drift where it took me. Kind of hard to explain now, but if you know what I mean then there’s no need anyway. Once you’ve felt it you need no description. The only sane reaction is to jerk yourself away before being swallowed by a tree or embankment or the devastation of a car wreck. Sometimes there’s no going back fast enough, and it’s too late. Me, I’d just get the willies whenever I thought about how close I’d come.

Ah, but enough of my mixed up analogies. The point is, I got away with my life and after the heart-pounding stopped I was really careful for a while. A long while, in fact. Eventually I got braver and took some risks. I wasn’t such a secret. I let the world in. I bought a business and one day had a business card and then I was on TV and everybody knew my name. Well, I know it wasn’t everyone, so what could the harm be? No one was watching anymore, right?

Besides, the name wasn’t quite the same name then, and who watched the local news channel but local people?

It started with the one I called Cowboy. He materialized beside me in the quiet part of the day, and left me the sound of spurs though he wore no boots. Afterwards, I went about my business, focused on the work, and tried not to think about it too much.

A month or so later, when I’d nearly forgotten, I found myself in conversation with a young man who wore mirrored shades like that other. A different guy altogether, so I’d thought. At some point I realized he’d just stopped talking altogether and was staring deep into my eyes. I felt a lurch in my stomach and a chill when I knew I’d stared right back. Not out of any kind of man-woman thing on my part, but like a rabbit stays still when finally cornered, staring at certain death. The young man breathed in time with me, then smiled wide and showed a pointed tooth. I almost fell backward and wanted to run but could not.

“You have a nice day now, Ma’am” was all he said then, not breaking eye contact, and slowly backed up before turning away and showing me that he walked on hooves.

Was I imagining this? Had my mind finally broken? I most certainly had done some damage to myself somewhere, what with the life I’d once led. Maybe I’d finally lost my grasp on reality.

But I knew it wasn’t true. Things were insane, this was insane, but it was real. I was going to have to deal with it; somehow I was going to have to find a way to not go crazy.

I did what I did the first time. I went back to work. I smiled, made money, looked like I was supposed to look. I looked good. At least good enough to look like I belonged where I was.

Summer came. I’d always liked summer best. Everything’s more relaxed and I’m not cold all the time. I like driving, and I like to put the window down. I didn’t miss the bad weather. I’d been out looking for treasures and trying to keep cool, and my guard was down, like before.

He wasn’t there when I pulled into that gas station. And I know the sound of a Harley Davidson as well as I know anything. But then he was there, astride the big hog, across the drive from me. He was next to the gas pump, though I knew he wouldn’t get any gas. And he was grinning.

His voice came across silky smooth and honeyed in my ear, while he still sat grinning across from me without saying a word.

“Nice day.”

“Yes” I smiled. Why was I smiling? I knew it was wrong, but I was scared so I smiled. Girls are dumb that way.

“Why don’t you get out of that truck and come have a seat? We’ll go for a ride.” The warmth dripped off him in waves.

“No thank you” I whispered. The sound of his voice filled my head. His lips hadn’t moved but for the smile. I looked towards the highway and stared, cold all over though it was at least 100 degrees. Maybe I could just drive away and not get stopped for taking the gas nozzle with me. It was taking forever.

Now he was in my face, still on the silent bike. His face was in my window. How had he gotten so close?

“Just get on.” Grinning. A tiny fleck of saliva at the corner of his smile.

I don’t know if I said no, if I whispered it, screamed it, or only thought it. It didn’t matter; he could hear me and he could smell my fear. Still his smile could melt butter.

“No. NO.”

This time I’d said it aloud and I wasn’t smiling; I’d said it strong.

 He tilted his head like a beguiling child might, all charm and wistfulness, even looked a little hurt, and said “Well Honey, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

“Yeah, I do” my mind spoke. And like that, he was in my ear again, only this time it hurt, each word like a blow; “Get. On. The fucking bike.” I turned towards the right, the passenger side, the side my ear was hurting on, and he said there from the seat, “Last chance.”

I didn’t know what it meant, what last chance I drove away from, but I watched him ride off away from me too, heard the bike’s roar, at the same time he spoke from the passenger seat. A tail brushed the gearshift and I flailed at it in terror, a live snaking thing that didn’t belong there. And then there was nothing there at all, no one beside me now. And no one was watching and no one had seen a thing. I could hear the bike circling the block and wondered if he would come back for me. I knew no one would think a thing if he came back and cornered me, not in this neighborhood. But I also knew he didn’t have the need; he’d made his point. He’d find me.

So, you see. I would never have started this had I known it would come. I really did believe I was safe. I’d survived the dance and got really strong but I never guessed at what didn’t get undone. And I knew I had to stop waiting, it was crazy to keep waiting when that shit had all stopped for so long. It was time to start living again. What I didn’t know was that IT waits, and can outwait me.

I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I really wish I could pretend it wasn’t happening, but I’d be lying. Maybe if we stood together I’d have a chance, but I wouldn’t blame you if you split. Knowing what I know, I would.

Then again, you haven’t left me yet. Maybe it’ll get tired of chasing me after all. And maybe, just maybe, Ill be stronger than I think.

I mean, I know how he got in, but I never saw him enter. I was alone, and then suddenly I was not, and he there at my elbow. Too close, too swiftly, like an spook. He seemed to change location without need of walking. Not there, then there. Close and almost overlapping, but strangely at a distance.

He had a definite physique, in fact I noticed because it seemed made of hard sinew, and that was clear despite the long sleeves and collar buttoned up tight. But I had a strange sensation of water or vapor as he stood near, and something else I couldn’t put my finger on; something that fogged my mind and called to mind a Peter Green song, Green Manalishi. Absurd. This guy was a cowboy.

He had the graceful stride and seat of a horseman, and a very slight bowlegged stance. He wasn’t wearing boots, and why would he be? He wasn’t on a horse, just shopping, just looking. I could tell at a glance anyway. The man had it in his blood, not his boots. He would not be scraped off easy, if he had a mind not to be.

In a million years I could not tell you what his face looked like, yet I would know him again, without knowing why. I think I’ve known of him all my life and this moment was just proof of it. He knew me too, although he never admitted it. Just kept playing that tune in my head, and talking, talking, until I wasn’t sure what he was saying.

There was one moment where I was clear, and it only came because I realized that what he’d said was a plea. Words, lists, delivered so matter-of-factly, nonchalantly even, with a Devil May Care tone, which is what waved the red flag.

He was working me! Intoning a code so subtly ingrained on me in another life, one I’d long left behind, but one he had certainly not forgotten. He’d been only waiting, biding time. And the time was now.

I jerked my head back towards his voice and saw a shimmer. The dark glasses had never come off, obscuring information I needed to stay present and in myself. They met his cheekbones and never moved or shifted but seemed part of his face. The longer I looked, the more they seemed the face itself, until I realized there was no face at all. I sucked in my breath, mouthing a scream.

Suddenly the focus snapped and he was just a cowboy again. What had I been thinking? He was talking again, using actual human words, and even laughed once. I shook away the cold I felt, then realized that no, I was actually hot, my skin prickly from the heat. I thought of the desert, and of fire. I saw him lick his lip, curling it. He was so very polite, but I imagined a fang there.

For just a moment he had made me feel sorry for him, had moved me to tears with his litany of woes. He’d almost made me touch him in some blind need to comfort, to ease the agonized hunger, the need he brought. Need that would never be filled, no matter who touched him.

I closed my eyes, telling myself my own name, remembering.

“Goddamn, are you listening?”

“No” I thought, opening them. And he was gone. I never saw him leave. And I know it’s funny, but I heard his spurs across the room.

The “yard” was dirt, mud proper. Chickens pecked and scratched, played their chicken dramas out with one another. Somewhere I could hear a goat in the mix, and that seemed fitting.

“Looks like home.” I replied with a smile.

“Come on in and sit down a while. I’ve got the coffee on.” And she looked me in the eye, plain faced and spoken. I knew already that I liked her.

We must have talked for an hour before I got down to looking at the things I came there for. Red glass she wanted to part with. I saw no need, but pulled each piece from its box anyhow, barely checking. I knew it was all as she’d said—perfect. I’d already paid her and wouldn’t have changed my mind. After all, she’d provided high quality pictures and had described each piece in detail.

She’d left the price to me. That was a new concept and one I did not wish to abuse. She’d contacted me and I wanted to play this right. I’d paid her a fair price, even told her she could get more if she chose to sell them herself, piece by piece.

It had been a long drive. I gratefully took the cup of steaming brew and cradled my hands around it, almost burning them. My bones were cold. It was one of those damp to the soul, chilly Northwest days, gray and close. Her home was a little haven on the muddy lane.

There were birds in cages that sang a storm when she spoke to them, pictures of family everywhere, and two very happy small dogs that fell in love with me at first sight. My guess was they did so with everyone, but I chose to take it personally. For the moment, I was the best and most exciting thing they had ever seen.

The coffee was not the deep and dark strain I live on, but a poorer woman’s coffee, a store brand that came in a can. I took another sip and thought she’d maybe put some magic in it, because it hit the spot so well—just what I needed. The chill left me and we communed over the simple drink, ten years between us and we worlds apart, yet strangely akin.

As I touched the red glass my eye wandered throughout the kitchen where we sat at a plain wood table. There in a glass front cabinet I saw her treasures, mostly worth far less than the pieces I inspected. And I knew she didn’t care, that these were the stories of her life and of her children’s. Mementos and gifts, each somehow connected to a special time or person. The red glass would have been beautiful displayed in the cabinet—the only place available for “fancy” things. But it was useless to her there. She already had everyday dishes to eat from, and she kept that display only for her most loved things. Red glass was better suited for cash to buy gas, gas that would go to the septic truck they worked with. They were struggling like everybody, and times were tough. Work comes first.

Still, I don’t think it bothered her at all to sell the glass. It was just “things”.

I learned a lot about Mary while I was there. She had a husband who seemed a good man, whose first thoughts were to carry my boxes and load them for me. She had a young daughter who minded her Mama, at least in front of company. And another, grown daughter who couldn’t meet me that day due to a flare of her illness. I learned that the illness had taken the daughters father, two uncles and a grandfather, and that it caused organ failure and stroke. Daughter was thirty years old and had suffered two strokes already. She was in bed today.

I listened to this information, seeing there was no self pity, no drama in the telling, but a matter of fact accounting of why the otherwise unthinkable was occurring—an offspring of hers not greeting company.

I learned that my new friend had been married for years to another man, an alcoholic who hit her often, until she summoned the courage and conviction to leave.

I saw that she was happy, but humble, and found myself admiring of her gentle spirit, her absolute lack of bitterness.

Her mother arrived with mail in hand, a daily tradition they kept regardless of all else. “Mother brings the mail everyday, and then we have dinner.”

Mother was on oxygen, but moved and observed like a bird, her quick movements belying her age and condition. She engaged me in a story of yet more glass, glass she’d collected one piece at a time, lifetimes ago, by filling up her gas tank. One free piece per fill up. She still had it all. I knew she was eager to show it to me, and she lived on the same lot as Mary, but I resisted the impulse to ask to see it.

It was time to go and I knew I shouldn’t draw it out any longer. Dark was coming, and these people needed dinner. So did I and so did the animals back home.

Mary stood and she told me, “I’m a hugging person. I hope you don’t mind.” and she put her soft arms around me. She was silent, feeling, holding the part of me that saw her and knew who she was. She did not let go, but stood this way for a time. I knew she smiled, though I couldn’t see her face. When I finally could, she said, “I hope to see you again.” Looked me in the eye, plain faced and spoken.

I went on then, drove through the wet and the falling night, drove to my own humble home. When I finally got there, I saw the smoke rising from the flue, the golden light of the window. I heard the dogs barking, then saw the biggest one wagging furiously on the porch like I’d been gone a week. For another moment, I am the best and most exciting thing ever seen.

I am wearing my favorite coat, the one that makes me look like a rock star and never fails to bring comments, even strangers touches. I hang the coat  in the closet and pull off my favorite vintage boots. One arm into my old Carhartt, I see my thundering, bumbling four legged children heading my way, mud and slobber flying, and I pull on the beat up boots I live in before they can get to me. They are not respecters of go to town clothes.

I clap my hands and call my big girl Bubba, because it’s funny, and the boy I tell a little rhyme to with his name in every line. He always seems to get a real kick out of this. They fawn and lean and wap their tails on my legs ‘til it hurts too much and I have to send them away. They leave their spit on my pants, but it’s time to change anyway.

There is a smile in this house, and food that is hot on my favorite plate. Here are my own treasures, my most loved things, and the ones who know me. Here are my stories, my secrets, my promises, and here are the things I won’t part with. Here are my flannel pajamas, the cookie jar I won’t sell for seven hundred dollars, the chipped china bowl on the shelf with a story no one knows but me. Here is the man who believes in me, even while not understanding me, and here is the land he’s fought to keep for us, covered in dips and puddles and mud. Here are the oversized dogs who love us, protect us and drool on us, and their oversized beds, cluttering up the floor. And here is the deal—the red glass is not for me either, but a means to an end. My treasures.

I see the mud on my boots, and I know if I ever build a house, there will be no carpets. Just nice wood floors, the kind you can clean. Grinning, I see muddy paws and rawhide bones, happy dogs.

We’re not fancy people.

For a quarter, I was willing to give them the chance to find that fit. I had the perfect place to give them that.

Or so I thought. They hung out there for months. I presented them as well as I could. Their best side. Their best position. I even considered giving them my old Bufalo fringed jacket to show off with, but decided it was beneath them. I wanted them to speak for themselves. And the Bufalo was in need of serious Love; it made them look used up.

I gave them a little bio telling about their origins, their age, at least the parts I knew. They looked pretty good sitting there. I figured someone walking by might fall in love. It had happened to me that way once. So I set them up front and center, but still in sight of security cameras in case anyone got any ideas. I didn’t want them to get snatched. The person capable of that would not have good intentions. It wasn’t that I had so much invested in them [a quarter, remember], but they deserved better than a thief. And truthfully, I’m trying to make a living.

Every day that I saw them, they were the same as I’d left them, except for the few times I found them tossed rather ruthlessly on their sides. Someone feeling them up, because they could, rejecting them for some cheap piece of skin down the way. Split leather pigskin, no doubt. Who knew the difference anymore? Not many who came here, looking for whatever might make them look good for as cheaply as possible.

They weren’t cheap, not by those standards. I know you can buy something with a similar look [if you don’t look close] for nearly half the price they languished for. And the only reason I said I’d let them be had for what I did is because there was nothing new about them. They would be perfect for that girl that asked how to make Frye boots look like the ones the starlets wore with their little boho dresses. The “vintage” look. You know, like they’d seen the backs of a few motorcycles and dirt roads.

The heels weren’t walked over but one sole had the beginnings of a hole. A bad enough scratch cut across that one’s toe. And they were creased from calf to ankle. They were a little beat up. They look like the slightly neglected children of my own perfect pair of Frye Ladies Campus boots, circa late 70’s to 80’s. The same 15” shank, same labels, same classic round toe and triple stitching. With this particular height and heel style, my pair would fetch three hundred dollars to the right buyer. They’re in perfect condition. I’d asked fifty for these russet colored babies.

Surely they’re worth it? I knew they were. I’d done my research.

The problem with assigning worth to previously owned objects is this: how much something’s worth is dependant on the Right Seller connecting with the Right Buyer, at the Right Moment. Sure, they’re worth fifty. They’re worth sixty or seventy, or more. But will the person they’re worth that to, find them? Apparently not a lot of Frye boot lovers were ambling around where I left them.

I’d been considering exposing them to a larger market, served up in pictures to whoever might happen to see. Boot porn, some people always look.

Well, the thing is, I’ve just learned that, well, it’s over. They’re gone. Someone coughed up that fifty and took them home. And I’m torn. I’m elated, because I knew they were worth it. I knew someone would have to have them. At the same time, I feel strange about it. I don’t know who bought them. I wasn’t there when it happened, and no one remembers. They could be anywhere by now. It was my mission—get them back in circulation and their rightful purpose. They were headed for the dump, you know.

But I can’t help wondering who bought them. I can only hope she loves them. Why else would she have spent the money?

I wonder if I’d recognize them in a crowd? Would they speak to me? Would their new owner speak to me, my own feet in boots like hers? Would there be a special vibration set off when they chanced to near me again? I’m pretty sure I’d recognize them.

One thing I know, whoever’s wearing them has got small feet. Size 7B. I can see her slipping them on as I did my own, saying “Oh yeaaaah, these are my boots.” She probably wore them out of the store. I hope she put them on her nightstand at bedtime, so she could see them first thing in the morning. I hope she gloats over them like I did mine. That’s who I hope bought them, someone who they called out to. “Hey, over here! We’ve been waiting for you!”

I guess my work is done. Now I can only hope. Here’s to you, Small Frye’s. I hope she treats you well.

I found some pictures. Pictures of you.

Not the you I once knew. Gone now, the mass of black curls. Gone, the sharp cheekbones women whispered about, the slanted green eyes that pierced so much they frightened people. Gone now the tiny frame of muscle that had lifted me high and twirled with such frenzy as to become blur. Not there, I looked for it; the small, silent cat who walked on padded paws, claws pulled in.

Jess, I remember. Lithe and compact, deceptively strong, the kind they say you should watch out for. He could land on his feet and turn on you faster than you could regroup. That was evidenced to me more than once. It wasn’t rare to see some big dumb oaf try to take him on. Usually it was because of the eyes, and his size, but also because of me. Just because he was with me and some big guy thought it should’ve been him.

Big-guy could have never kept up with me. In fact, I would have left him wondering what had just happened to him. We both knew that.

Now that I think of it, I guess since then I probably gave that guy a try or two. You can probably guess the outcome.

I’m sorry, I was talking about you like you weren’t in the room. But in a way, I guess maybe you’re not, are you? I’m still having a time putting it all together. You are the same guy, after all. And then, you aren’t.

I am not the one you knew either.

It’s been a long time.

I think maybe what’s happened is this simple: You grew up. That makes sense. I guess I did too. Certainly, I’ve come at least as far as you.

It’s not that I myself look much different. No, I really don’t think I do. I might look better, even though I have laugh lines now. But I’ve replaced myself.

I didn’t do it all at once, and it was never intentional. Just eventually, enough of that old me died, and someone new settled in. I never knew it would be that way.

I tried to hang on to who I was and who we were and what we said. What we did. And one day, I just couldn’t find you anymore. I never really knew what happened, or couldn’t remember. More and more, a glass and a needle had made the shape of us into something I couldn’t see. But something I couldn’t leave either.

Finally, I let someone else do it for me, for us. He slid in like a snake, slithering into the space you left. He struck with something you couldn’t fight, a venom with no antidote. He helped me turn on you, away from you. It didn’t take long for me to see what I had done. What he had done. There was no undoing it, but I had to tell you. And I still don’t think the end came there.

I would’ve died. Without you, I would’ve died. You saved me but you couldn’t stop the seizures.

Before it happened, I remember us being inside. I’m standing in the barred doorway smoking, and someone’s yelling at me to get away from the door. “Don’t get too close to the bars.” Hands are reaching in to grab my lit cigarette. And voices are passing and lingering, calling to me with proposals and curses, insane whispers rustling and fading on, smells, Mota. In the pitch black, a sudden awareness of a body and a pair of eyes so close I can feel heat, see blinking. This time a hand reaching in, offering smoke.

I take another hit of cognac from the singer’s bottle, for courage. I’ll be outside soon. It’s cold. We finally head out together.

At first, it’s just like pins and needles. It starts in my feet and moves upwards, and I stand still looking at myself, trying to see something. You’re hissing at me now to walk, reminding me where we are, but my feet don’t do what I tell them. I look at your face but the picture is in pieces. Triangles and slivers, broken glass.

I know my head explodes. I hear a loud “pop”, when the pins and needles get that far up. When I hear it, the kaleidoscope vision I’ve had just before, vanishes. With that “pop”. And then there’s dark.

I hear screaming, a wailing, that builds and rises. A horrible sound and one I hope I never hear again. Absolute terror and agony in it, a person being skinned alive. I hear it from far away, and I strain to tell it’s source, and I can’t see a thing but blackness.

I’m trying so hard to fight my way out of the black. I can still hear everything, and you’re screaming my name. All my will is given to it, but I can’t help it. Just black. The blackest black I’ve ever known. Where do you think I am? I’m serious, do you know? Because I don’t. I’m gone, but trapped, still here. I am blind and I am dead, but still aware of me. Still hearing you scream at me. Still registering the impact when you start slapping me, but too dead to feel. In truth, it’s a worse pain that any other pain I’ve ever felt—that much I register. Dead, but alive. Afterwards, I will dream for years that I am dead. Dead, but aware. That’s where I am, I can’t come back, I can’t help you. I can’t do anything.

The people that see me when you bring me in think I’m out of it. And I am. By this time I’m not even twitching; I am silent, unresponsive, unfeeling, “unconscious”. I hear them say it. But I hear every word they say, every word you say. All these years later, I will still feel Erin’s hands on my face, over and over stroking, her voice the only peace like a song “It’s going to be all right—It’s going to be all right.” She says my name, over and again, tells me she is right here, right here, right here. The only one who seems to understand—I can still HEAR.

How does she know where I am? She knows. No one else does.

But you save me. You get me to her. You yell my name so many times I don’t fly off with those screams I hear, those screams that are really mine.

Erin knows about this place. She must hear the voices in my head that tell me not to listen, not to listen to her, that try to keep me with them. She never stops saying my name, never stops touching me, never gives up. I know it, know she is holding on, showing me a light I can’t see or really feel, but she keeps the tether of it wrapped around my soul.

God. Erin. I wish she knew. She was the one who saved us both that night.

I can’t tell the rest of the story now. I thought I could. But it turns out I’m not brave enough after all. You have your story, and I have mine, but you don’t know the rest of mine. If I could get through it without crying, without looking for the scar…

Maybe it’s better if I leave it that way. I know I can always fast forward. That’s easier.

I see you in pictures. One, I keep only in my head. No one else can see it.

You’re sitting on a kitchen chair out my back door playing slide on an old Les Paul. Tipping the chair back, rocking it. You’ve just had a haircut—the only one I ever saw you with. Your wild curls look tame. Like they might even stay that way.

We’ve never said a word before, least not that I can remember. But I hear what you’re playing and I can’t help it and I give you that look. And too much passes between us then and I can’t take it back. And you just say “How eloquent you are.” And you are playing slide again. But now it’s only for me.

I had another one; I kept it for years ‘til someone made me throw it away. It was you, again with the Les Paul, but it had nothing to do with me. I just liked the picture. My friends liked it; they thought you were someone I didn’t recognize; a rock star, maybe. They’d always ask who you were, and I’d just shrug. I liked it because I could see blue on you.

There’s more. The last place I knew about without me in it. A box, and my shaking hand on the cover and lifting, before I can say not to. And there it is, all of it. And I know you’re serious, because this is not the outfit of a dabbler. And I know you know I know. And I watch you walk like a ghost out the door for your appointment. I know what we’ve lost is never coming back.

There are several missing pages. I don’t know where those shots went, but I never have seen them anyway. I just leave them blank. The one I find next is someone else again.

And I ask him, “Are you happy?”

Then “Do you love her?” And you are silent for too long.

“ I never want to have again what I had with you. The kind of love that makes you DO what you would never do, under any other circumstances.”

And I know just what you mean.

You are comfortable, you tell me so. And it’s all right if we just sit holding each other all night, and if we cry for who we were because it’s all we’ll ever have of it now.

And then I found these others. Not mine at all, they’re just out there and I saw them.

They really do have not a thing to do with me, just like that other picture. Someone I don’t know; yet I’d know you anywhere.

Age has found us all, if we’ve survived. And you wear the weight of your soul in your eyes, in your flesh. Just as I do. It’s shocking, really, to see the scars. No, they’re not ugly. I know about them, anyway. Like you know about mine. All the same, we forget.

And I ask, “Are you happy?” and I can’t hear an answer. But you look comfortable, and so I tell you so. You reply by holding your guitar, the same as always.

And I ask, “Do you regret anything?” And you are silent again, but I think I see you smile.

Jess?

 It’s good to see you.

Maimonides

I’ve never been helpless

I’m not the baby

Anymore

Don’t worry

I don’t need saved

I’ve made it this far

On my own

I’m all right

I never asked for

Not your baby

All alone

Don’t worry

I’m okay

I was your baby

Not anymore