“There are no second acts.” Floating is not done in hallways so much as among them. The act is passive, and the longer it continues, the closer it gets to becoming a state. Flickering fluorescents douse relentless. Synapse scorch and burn relation.

…

Just as quickly as she had come, she was gone. Plans jotted on bar napkins suddenly seemed messy and incomplete, their authors’ incoherencies faded on cheap materials. There’s never a phone call when the good ones leave you. The absence of contact starts growing in the subconscious before you understand it’s over, and still you dial, and wait, and time, and prepare, and voicemail ramblings never sounded so unsure. She knew, and the moment she heard my voice, somehow, I knew, as well.

Trees previously leveled were erected like buildings. Their shade, normally a relief, instead shroud possibility and fence me out. Lines drawn, boundaries laid, and I, tired, recovered with a struggling sigh. The eight and four would remain a yellow bird to chase strictly in spirit, no more in shape. It was still late in the summer season, but I felt September’s chill creeping up my bones.

August’s siren sings a sweet goodbye, and I am left to wonder: when the days grow short do hopes grow shorter? If escaping winter’s grasp is the only goal I have, I must attend and fight forthright and sing the sweet cull’s counter-melody. A haunting tune is set, but it is merely complement to what nature has intended. For every rise there is a set, for every warmth there is a chill, and when the sun is at it’s strongest, I’m aware of what’s to come.

So I snake and weave and grasp for every ray and every dawn, for there is hope in every second and I’m the pilot of all time.

In and out. Up and down. The restaurants, the bars, the sun, and the moon. They were cycles, and I became punch drunk off the spin. Beauty came along as the 6 to my 12, and while the colors bled, she remained the clearest image opposite of me. After a while, I could no longer tell if she was along for the ride or if she was the storm herself. I wasn’t quite sure I cared.

The cycle continued.

Weeks or months passed. Before I knew it, I had gotten adjusted to the chaos. When my head settled and my feet gained hold of the ground below. The colors, once bright in their blur, dulled upon setting, and every photograph we had taken appeared muted. Nothing with Beauty ends with a bang, and so when I slowly spun out of the cyclone, I wasn’t surprised. I’ll never know if she was.

Beth was halfway into her stay – there were thirty-six hours until she’d be going through security – and we were walking through the park. She kept pointing out every building, every tree, every path, and everything I take for granted every single day. The city through her eyes was new, fresh, and fascinating. When after a few minutes she caught herself doing all the talking, she self-consciously apologized for babbling. I waved her off, of course, but she still asked what I was thinking. She caught me; I was busy answering my own question: Why we travel to see the ones we love. Life isn’t your latest moment or your most recent emotion; it’s all of them both as their parts and their whole. So as we go our separate ways in a day and a half, we were still here, there was still a park with new buildings, new trees, and new paths. Even as time bullet trains along, that never goes away. So when she asks me to start talking, I restrain myself from what’s running through my mind, and I mention how I’d never seen the city quite like this before.

The call came, and I was transported 15 months into my past.

She was beautiful, vibrant just as I remembered her.  Successful and smart, we fell back into old habits…old habits with an older mindset.  I was wiser, more mature – everything I wasn’t last we spoke.  In the back of my mind, I was turning over all the mistakes I made a year before, and I could only pray she wasn’t doing the same.

My prayers seemed to be answered.  Calls were frequent, and things were fresh again.  I was forgiven.  I was Jack’s Atomic Bomb.  Erase everything.  Regain a year.  “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–” I took them both.

Somehow I always knew the call was coming, but it was appropriately displacing, being there and then.  It was a through street, a purgatory, and the potential positive and negative battled and raged to an oddly calming sense of levity.

Eighty-Four was empty and still the roadside trees came to a standstill.  The scenery, all of a sudden static, fell apart at the seams, until there was nothing at my sides.

My friend Patrick introduced us. He gave me one of those, “I’ve got a girl you have to meet.” This wasn’t typically Patrick’s style, so when he said it, I listened. She walked into the bar, no, she danced into the bar. There was a hop and a skip in her step. She was cool, calm, calculated and deliberate. She smiled with heart, and her laugh emanated around the room.

Through all the talk, there seemed to be a knowing glance, a sly smile, a wink in my direction. Nothing of affection, just as if to say, I get it, and I think you might, too.

I got it.
And she had me.

…

Beauty came along several months before. She wandered in and out of our lives. I never quite knew where she was coming from, where she was going, and whom she was going there with. I just quickly found out that it wasn’t me.

A few months after meeting Truth, Beauty came around again. The sun was shining, the air was bright, the feeling in the air was one of relief. Winter was over, and this was our summer. It rained the entire month before we hung out and that seemed to be the end of the storm. The beginning of a new chapter, a new story. And I wanted her to be the lead in that story.

It’s 5:30pm and I’m hurtling back toward the city and the weekend by commuter train. By hurtling, I mean crawling so slowly to the next stop that I’m actually trying to count every leaf on any passing branch – “11,12,13…”. The pace is both dreadful and necessary.

I shouldn’t be so mad. And I’m not, really. I’m confident and prepared. (It’s the weekend, remember?) Frantic, fast, blurring, colors piercing skin and I am everything I daydream of, everything I will remember. The deeper breaths either feel hollow and hallow.

I remember to keep my heart beating.

Of course, the cloudy sky doesn’t help. The rain is imminent, a word on the tip of God’s tongue. But I can be the sun. No! I must be the sun. What if nobody else will? Friday would become Wednesday, and that cannot happen. There’s too much to do. Mistakes to make, romances to have, nights to remember, nights to forget.

I need uppers so I put on “Colorful Language.” The book stays shut, and I cleanse my palette. I had a secret, and then I forgot it.

And me.

When it’s all over there’s a train station clock that stays still for hours, and a small town that has buried itself into my past.

I board the train and let it steal me to the skyline that’s become my home.

Friday night was early, off of work with skates on my feet… No! I was a snowball catapulted down a mountain, skipping, picking up speed, gathering snow, and surely discarding other flakes along the way. “Oh, hi! I’m in a rush somewhere oh you can’t come I can’t talk, bye!”

My roommate and I are antsy in a line, still time seems to speed by and we escape only because the wall of 2 AM is hurtling toward us. We run skip call text and then we’re somewhere new and soon the wall is upon us. Now we’re home. How? Early is either a blessing, a curse, or something in between.

Saturday night is late. There’s less pacing and more sprinting. We are short distance runners. Our moves are deliberate. The lateness transforms the 2 AM wall into a slowly closing, vertical door. We get to live out our action movie fantasies as we rush to “Indiana Jones” ourselves underneath right before the door shuts. Maybe we lose our hats during the slide and reach under the ever-shrinking exit to grab it back JUST before the door shuts. When this happens we tip these metaphorical adventurer hats to our fallen brothers and sisters who went home at last call, as if to mock those we don’t like and beckon the ones we do to follow us next time. Our Harrison Ford smile tells them we are good, alive, daring, vivacious!

Sometimes there’s a booby trap on the other side, but not tonight. We trade war stories and make them as if there is no difference between recounting stories and creating them. The sun warns us to rest, and we succumb.

My Sunday self hates me.

Or
I met her while we waited for an intercity bus.

Sitting standby, awkward small talk peppered confusion through our minutes, barely seconds we filled up the best that we knew how.

(Or could we better?)

Green eyes blazing through the haze of another spring-postponing nearly rainy day. I smiled when she did, and I made sure each move and word fell strong, as though, this may not be my one chance, but it’s a chance for which I’m grateful. Create connection, set foundation, don’t let it simply lie.

The bus was packed, two seats they said, “are you together?” “Yes!” I yelled out to myself, but instead looked at her as if to ask. As though we get this all the time, we almost have to laugh. “Oh no, we’re just friends,” we’d say. “You would make a great couple,” and we’d smile again. Awaiting rejection, a look from her sending opportunity to its grave. A moment passed, just “no” we said, but in the time she gave it thought. We climbed the steps to hunt down seats, together, somehow, I hoped.

One seat. Patient, hopeful, smiling softly, she gave it up for me. When I sat down, one chance missed, the gentleman next to me, asked with sincerity, “Oh, are you two together?” “Oh no,” I said, although I wish I’d played along.

I can still see her boarding, slinking forever gracefully. I paused briefly, filling in the gaps of her story. In twenty minutes, she made me want to no longer waste this time. I can do this. I can be better. I can be everything and all – the sun that’s aching to break through the clouds or the freckles in her eyes. Every hour passing on this bus, her face fades a little more, but it could have been (it could have been!), just ask any passenger.

I met her on an intercity bus.