Rare Thursday Nights

"The sad heart of Ruth when, sick for home, she stood in tears amid the alien corn."

Ruth 1:66-67

Nursing old wounds and promptly biting the hand that feeds me.

The few weeks the hills were as green as the graveyard lawn, were the weeks we fell in love.

Now, only brittle brush and a thick layer of fog lay between us.

But it is too far for me to call you tonight.

Here is a side effect of independence that I failed to read of the side of the internationally orange bottle.

Self-sabotage hurts so much more when you're the only one. Cosmetic wounds become fatal ones

and scars don't fade with the same ease.

I've been prescribed a strange feeling in the back of my throat. It tastes like moldy, too soft apples and cosmic dread.

Walk it off, clear your head. Standing fields of crop that aren't native to my mind,

wishing all the while that I hadn't developed self-reference

That fatal day 14 years ago,

driving past the exit towards my best friend's house. Towards nothing else,

realizing every moment that passes, is passed.

And it's not the end of the world,

but nothing ever actually has been;

so who are you to say?