Celebrate the birthdays of the high-school friends you never had and stumble through the park in your neighborhood looking out for who-knows-what. Offer up a toast to those not in attendance. Then fall asleep. With one eye closed cover up from head to toe in dead or dying leaves. Then wake up all gold and orange, the morning sun shining just for you. You're always gone or you're going, you left or you're leaving soon. So long to the songs you couldn't sing and so much for the life you didn't lead. So you've made up your mind this time, you say, "Getting out is not an option now." You're tired of a life without surprises: always seeing faces you don't recognize. This house is all the home you've known, do you really think there's anything or anywhere not here? So go have your fun, run if you must, but all the roads lead right back. You're gone or going, you left or leaving. You're gone.

Car parked on the street in front of my house, headlights on, engine idling. Your window's up, but I think I can see your lips moving, then force a frown. The night comes down like snowflakes kept suspended between heaven and this hell you've made from gifts forgotten on your kitchen table. One you took back, and one you kept and left to gather dust like photographs of days you used to treasure, but now you're someone new. So who did you used to be, and what made that so bad? The mistakes you re-enact, and the sin of an unexamined past. So flip through high-school yearbook pages till you find the face above your name and stare hard into the eyes of some dumb kid you don't quite recognize. That lost and losing kid you thought you'd left behind. Next to words like "keep in touch" are other names you know that you should know next to numbers left un-called. Four years removed and you call yourself someone new. Well, who did you used to be, and what made that so bad? You did all they could ask and you gave it all you had, but that wasn't quite good enough.

Her dad says, "Stand up straight," with his eye against the aperture, so shoulders back and eyes wide, she smiles big and becomes a framed and frozen memory, and hangs from the hallways walls in her grandma's house.

We will make today our anniversary and write the soundtrack for the end of days: "I meant to say," "I miss the way" "if you could stay," "be the first face that I see." Once more, stare the clock down till the ones line up and make your wish. For the last time, I'm not strong enough to pull my weight. We went to waste. Killed our time. Bet our lives on a future never present. A deadbeat dad who only visits you on birthdays to remind you of the life that you nearly had. I don't think that we will get a countdown, just the sound of nothing, and the end. When the black comes, will you shut your eyes? Hold your breath? Or shout, "Happy anniversary!"? For the last time, regret the broken things we never fixed that now can't wait. Believe me, this won't hurt a bit unless tomorrow comes.

Tell me one more time how the light would pour in through your window, parents' house, spring of '99. And how the world looked so convincing on the other side of glass, like a display case full of things you'd never have. I know you wait for the right time, that time has come and passed, but every second's one more second chance. And the trip to your door, far more than your ego could afford so just stay locked up tight. So I sit and wait and listen for a phone call or the mail to come. The daily iteration of this wearing-thin routine. The walls watch me stare back at them: the same blank face I see as when the mirrors turn their eyes on me. Because where I am has never been where I want to be. Is it friends or kin that keep you here? Connections you never cut. Another scar, another year of faking. The days move slow and end too soon, the doors unlocked and open wide, a world out there you never thought of taking. But the sun outside is just as bright as you think.

I heard about the dream you had where the sky opened up and you flew away and the ground disappeared beneath your feet and your arms spread wide like you could hold the earth. From that height, you looked down on where I stood in my backyard and you thought you could see me waving. Oh, how I wish I could see you like that, but in my dreams I never leave the ground. Frankie says your father doesn't like me anyhow. I saw the picture that you took with my face turned away, you couldn't keep my attention. When the television's on, you know I'm bound to be distracted. If all it takes are lights and sounds, imagine if I left the house! Your patience is a miracle to me. I'm so glad that picture still lines your mirror-frame, and I don't care if your dad dislikes me, I'm still in for movie night at your place. He'll catch us on the couch in each other's arms. He won't approve of where your hands are.

It's nearly August, means your birthday's soon so I write "Brother" in a rest stop parking lot and try to separate the never-knews from the memories lost or just forgot. I know I missed out, I know it's my fault. I hope you grew instead of just gave up. All these postcard apologies only count the times I wasn't home. Another phone call, another sad song plays as you walk away and I'm still waiting for the good days. So in the dust of a rearview window, I write your name. For forgiveness, what I wouldn't give, so I'll make a gift of where I've been. Over state lines and via highways, I take you with me. Call me selfish, or call this crazy. I'll call it free. So climb your rooftop mountain, and watch for signals sent from over horizons, a flash of light in naval code. Another year gone, another sad song scrawled on a notebook page. So long to the good days. So much for the good days. Goodbye to the good days.

A song so softly hummed and green glass on the ground, the hand that you're spreading over your eyes from shame, and to keep out the light. If the last time was the last time, would you be here now?

Count your reasons to stay on the one hand, with the other wave them goodbye: this haunted house, hollow now, the tree that you planted, and the street where you rode your first bike. If you run out of cash, keep your quarters. Our number won't change, cross my heart. Measure moments until the truncated day comes. The sun has been sleeping too late. Press a palm to your eyes, and squint back the blindness and tears from each time you find light. Stop for coffee at an interstate diner. Shoot some whiskey, sleep it off in the car. Leave the shoulder all dizzy, and nauseous from motion sickness that has chased you this far. If you run out of gas, don't get greedy, siphon drops from the whole parking lot. This is leaving. This is living. This is boring. Every morning there's an ache in my bones. My postcards all parsed with reticent phrasing, and I'm doing fine on my own. I'm doing just fine.

I will bury you out in the backyard. (I will not dig too deep.) Leave you under pine tree needles shed in brown and green, your shoebox coffin filled with memories: ticket stubs from films we've seen and pictures from some cardboard camera. As you are falling asleep tonight you will be resting in my veins. This is what you wanted, isn't it? Lately? I've been keeping clocks in time-out, their faces facing wills. Forget the time and lose all use for numbers. Keep the TV on so you don't feel alone. Out on the west end, where the trees give up and fall away from this man-made nature into desert, dry and useless space, I was watching when the ripples stilled upon the lake and your bubbles surfaced from the last breath you would take.

No one in this town knows how to drive in the rain which I always figured was really a shame, it means all of our showers have to go down the drain and we never get to see darker clouds. Matt won't believe it but I'm growing a mustache; it's thin but gets thicker each day. I'll move to L.A. and make porn-star cash, to see me you'll just have to pay. I've been meaning to go for a walk and come see you but I always forget which roads take me away. I can't read the street signs, my maps are all folded so I just walk in circles all day. I keep thinking of things that I'd like to tell you about girls and my friends and my classes at school but I hate using words unless I really have to, so I'll draw you a picture real soon. Bring your guitar and I'll bring my new haircut, we'll detail our lives over soda somewhere. The diner crowd's sleepy, so you play a song and I"ll steal us some new silverware. Break down again around here next November, we'll drive farther north and pull leaves off the wind, and then sleep until April when everything's blooming and pray our own lives start again. We can pray our own lives start again.

It's possible that this is all I need: a little girl, a wife, a job, and a place to keep my things, but I've been having trouble lately staying clean. And every night I dream the same dream. I wake up every morning from the same dream where I'm a little boy and you're a kid I know in class and we make plans to skip this scene when we get our grades back. The teacher tries to read the notes we pass, but just keep your tongue tied, I know that she won't crack our code and I would never tell a soul. Saturdays mean waking up too late from a night spent in the backyard, my B.A.C. .28, and I broke in through the back door and I wrecked the garden gate. I hope it's me and not my mistakes that you hate. Then come Sunday off to church, where we can pray for "a better dad, a bike, and better grades." Or "a lover that can cover bills, not this broken man-shaped weight." Or a family that can be enough for me. All of a God who always listens, but never seems to understand we're only in it for ourselves, we sons of man. So where did all my plans go? Are they with our yesterdays? I'd burn our sadness black before I'd let those pictures fade.

If you're looking for solace, or some name-brand escape, well, I wrote the book on the clean getaway. So eager to say that there's nothing worth missing but my notebooks all burdened with words hard to relate. So hand me the paint, I'll go over the faces that your kid drew in crayon on college-rule lines. A weekend away in a neighboring state. A message left says "goodbye", and never gets played. If what I got back was what I have given my pockets would burst at the seams; some matches, a jacket, and a hollowed-out heart. They all make for light traveling. With a head full of questions and a gas tank on empty you left for the coast in an off-white sedan. I jigsaw my maps and throw darts at the pieces, try losing myself to find out where I am. You're up and down like the sun. Bright and dark as the moon. You're here for today, you'll be gone sometime soon. It's the light in your eyes, and the proof that you needed the world has a way to erase where you've been. It's the features of strangers, all these vague intersections and the failures of friendships when the cards are all down. I'm the whispered incessance, I'm the soft reassurance of the voice in your head that says life's just for now. So you prepay your penance for the evil you do. You've make your mistakes, you admit to a few. Forget all the faces of you misplaced affections, take a chance, pack your bags, and then up and skip town. I followed the footsteps I found in the sand and they end where the tide comes in, you might see a pattern, but there's no sort of plan. It all hinges on where you stand.

So this is the view from the floor, the carpet pressed against your face. You always get this way come August. The blood on my hands starts today. If you lay just so, you will always keep the feeling of waking up in Spring.