West

West

I was outside again. The molasses air of midnight seemed to have a stronger pull that night than most other nights. I picked my least favorite spot on our entire plot of land to plop my depressed robe on because I believed it was in the worst of people's places that the best of people's wisdom has sprung from. That miserable spot I chose was my back to the groove of the ditch that separated our front yard from the road. My eyes watched a trillion galaxies and all of the life or absence thereof within them, then I blinked and saw nothing, then I opened my eyes and saw everything. This was my favorite thing to do on nights where arguments sat in my stomach like a brick of salt. I don't know why, but there was something about the freedom of darkness that calmed me. Was it because during the night, the sun's burning, overbearing eye was on the other side of the world? Did this give me that sense of liberty? Or was it the likeness that the endless void shared with my past that always called me back under the moon?
I knew only one thing in my life, and that was that I didn't know enough. I knew of regret, of guilt, of shame, of sadness, of emptiness, but not enough of it to make a difference. I didn't know enough of fulfillment, of satisfaction, of happiness, of pride. I knew of pain and of fear like the sky knew of its crystal guests, but the sky pulled off those jewels much better than I ever could; she wore them like a necklace and boasted of their luminance, and men drooled over them and called it beauty, whereas I tucked mine away into a linty pocket, never to be seen by anyone but always to be felt by my own paranoid grip. I wished I could parade my own accomplishments and charisma like everyone else, but I always ended up in the ditch only imagining what boldness I must have to even think of the thought.
I didn't hate my husband, I just disagreed with him about everything-not that I had always disagreed with him. It'd been thirteen years since we put the baby up for adoption. Wow, I didn't even realize how the time had passed. I didn't like thinking about it; in fact, I usually got sick at the thought, which is surprising now that I think about how much I think about how much I think. Well, it was in my head, and there was no getting it out clean. It'd been thirteen years since we put him up for adoption, and not a day went by that I didn't claw at the back of my eyelids because of it. I wonder if things would've been better if we had kept him; I wonder if my marriage wouldn't be strewn, if we wouldn't be so in debt to the wrong people, if we would have a nicer house or a nicer car or a nicer life, if I would be happier. So many woulds, I found myself investigating for the shoulds. I should be happy, I should be debt-free, I should have a nicer life. But neither the shoulds nor the woulds helped the bubbling in my heart, so naturally I turned to the only option left- the coulds. Could I be happy once again? Could I live free of worry? Could I have a better life? I listened for the heavens' answer, craned my neck for the earth's advice, but the only response I got was the toad's croak and the grasshoppers' chorus. Not even the dark would pay me mind, it cloaked me with indifference that I could feel in my bones.
A car growled past me, and although it couldn't see me, I could feel it's burning eyes graze my scalp. That was one thing I knew, and one thing I knew I could do. I could feel. I stood up after a few moments, and I felt less alone than before, even though I didn't remember feeling lonely. I looked at the house at the end of the gravel road, my only neighbor, my second-closest stranger, only two hundred feet from my closest one in our bedroom. The zenith of time and space above me, I walked back inside with my hands in my robe pockets. I felt my pains and my fears between my fingers, and they felt like car keys.