I moved 300 miles.
I attempted to make a new life.
There was opportunity.
I drove to see you, sometimes you drove to see me.
I did my best at the time.
We drove to New York, we drove to New Hampshire, we drove to Vermont, we drove to Connecticut.
We flew over the ocean.
We stood on an island crescent, half encroached upon by an ocean, half by a sea.
It was there I stopped sleeping.
We came home, we ran down Broadway through traffic, hand in hand.
We rode trains and laughed endlessly.
We lived a life I never knew and still my body wouldn't sleep.
I took what I could to coax it, some nights tea, some nights pills, some nights wine, some nights each.
One morning I stood at the window, too far gone, and thought best to jump.
As I raised the lower sash and the sounds of the city rushed in upon the wind, I heard your footsteps.
You stood in only a t-shirt, unaware.
I never told you, I was too ashamed.
We rode trains and hardly made eye contact, conversations in false starts.
We both tried our best.
I became clumsy.
I flew to Cleveland, one night only, for work.
I tripped in the street, in the rain, I broke my arm.
The nurses brought great sarcastic and unsympathetic laughter.
I wrote a letter of recommendation to their superior with my good arm.
I bought disposable cameras because I could use them one handed.
I hid them in my sling.
I kept slipping further away, fatigued, rudderless.
I had a tendency then to argue over menial, naive things.
One night in the cinema I almost lost consciousness.
We sat hand-in-hand on the bed in the ER.
They took my blood, an MRI.
Whatever they gave me to settle, on top of what I already took, briefly put me out.
We drove back to Connecticut, we drove to New York, we drove to New Hampshire, we drove to Maine.
My arm was still in a sling on the day a deer ran in front of us at 60mph.
I veered side-to-side and only instinct saved us.
Or luck.
I wanted a picture but there were no marks on the street.
I stared at the road in silence on that day and knew.
And still I drove to Vermont, you drove to Connecticut.
Until the day we stood in the field above my house at sunset with heavy eyes.
I asked you to put anything left into a letter.
Then one day I drove from Connecticut to Maine.
2013