Wild

The room is dark, and cold, and quiet when you wake, how well you sleep in the west even as you miss the cacophony of your own street corner. The dogs pace around your bags as you load the car and you leave as the morning rush slows to a trickle. 21 years by each other's side and at last the Road lies ahead, open, unwavering, free. You look at him and laugh in a rush as mountains fly past, deserts, brush. The Wild West spreads out around you and it is all yours now, a gift that you give each other, that you give yourself and I am ready to take it now, I am ready to let the dry desert air rush through me and beat the madness to the surface, I am ready to leap from this mountain top and see where I land. He gave you the good book once and the entire world, you think perhaps the madness lay in you all along but he told you to look for it. My heart swelled with gratitude a hundred times over, remembering.

You are here, now. Embedded in the star trail, lulled in a silent vacuum and there is nothing else to do but explore what comes out of it. Ten years ago today I drove across the entire land and here I am flying down the road again, Jack lives on in me even as my skin gets old and my bones grow weary, because the fire that lives in your chest does not slow with age.

It will rage until you die, and all you have to do is let it.