MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY

MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I get nostalgic for open windows, bare feet, the yellow lines of a highway, sliding under and away. Long summer nights and Coleman bags, unzipped and spread out. Stars.

In my eyes are graveyards and barn swallows. In my hands have been saddles and ink pens.

I know wood stacked up for winter, how it dries and cracks. I know old sweaters in attics, and scrapbooks with promises to love forever. I have written a few. Keep some, still.

I wear pearl snaps, outdated, out of style. Remorse for Sears & Roebuck catalogs comes easy with a Liberal Arts education and a few mixed drinks. Anyone can snap a photo. Traffic at the overpass, and my breath scatters.

If I knew the secret, it’d be different. If I knew the right words, I’d say them. All I have is this heart, broken again and again, and healed again by mountains and rivers and old letters you have sent or the ones I never did. We said be brave for what comes, your hand on mine, squeezing, and your voice, soft, tucked in my shoulder.

Roads remain. And scrapbooks. Turn any page. How easily you could have found me a freelance writer, a drifting cowboy, a secret poet, or a mad angel-headed hipster. The person I thought I was then, the person you thought you loved, then. I was none of those things, only pretending. I am all of those things, still.