If you became righteous
Laying down in the back of a 2004 CRV covered in crumbs and a thin layer of dust. The trees through the window are getting progressively more orange, obscured, however, by the crack in my eye—the silvery, rainbow crack, reminiscent of a tear in a contact lens or the water breaking in a womb. The tear that is fluid and changing, like a kaleidoscope. The crack unaccompanied by pain. Mother points at wild horses and grazing cows. She’s asking me to look out the window, to read things off her phone, to choose the next song, and I can’t see anything.
Sometimes the blind spots last. There’s one currently haunting me out of my left eye. It disappeared for a while at Lake Huron, probably from the cleansing power of the salt. Heavenly feathers crusted to the sand like shellac. The waves, frightful against the city line on the opposite side, beckoning surfers from Portugal, beckoning to adrenaline seeking sailors. The waters are empty as is the beach, save for me and Mother and Father. There is a small red shack behind us locked up for the lifeguards. A lighthouse at our opposite, sticking out of the rocks like the hilt of a knife.
They gave me a wine glass larger than my cranium and filled it with red, like they were filling a prescription. And I sat there, feeling out of place, after reading about someone feeling out of place for twelve hours, after writing about people feeling out of place and being out of place myself for the majority. I am out of place but can generally find the invisible wall to hide behind. I have taken the torch from my Mother, so she can now find her voice to make a joke. My brother couldn’t put people on edge if he tried. My Father, well. He blends so well I can’t find him.
In the car afterwards I’m stuffed in the middle with my knees knocking, full of red and turkey and fresh air. I can see out of both eyes, into vacant grocery stores with the lights on, into gas stations full of homeless people, into parking lots and left turn lanes and whatever else there is. And I’m hit by it, that invisible wall, full force backing me off the edge. I can feel a phantom behind my teeth begging to get flossed out. You can run across the whole country, bears from North Woods nipping at your heels. You can run across, but there is no such thing as outrunning. Half of your life is for realizing things like this. The truths you were raised on, there is no such thing.
We are talking to each other anonymously in baby blue. I’m in the middle seat in the car on the way home and I’m crushed with the weight of it. With the salt from the enraged lake. The salt landing on my eyelashes and burning my eyes. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, the truth will always be the truth. It was the truth last time I was up here and wouldn’t you know it… wouldn’t you think the truth would always be the same. Someday soon my visa will be ripped away even though I’m grasping it with both hands. I probably won’t even be sad, because I’m running out of reasons to stay. I’ll step through exit customs for the last time and I won’t feel anything, because I’ll know the truth. The <ERROR>. It doesn’t matter if I’m here or there. I don’t think there’s a place on earth I could possibly go where it wouldn’t be the case.