i wish for that ability, sometimes.

not the super hero quality that allows one to listen in on the evil plots of simply misguided grocery clerks.

just the money and the car and the freedom to leave.

there are so many ties here, many ties i want to sever, many ties i just wish to put behind me until i get the distance i need to be able to look down and see just exactly what went on.

she tells me not to disappear.

i would sit, quietly, in the same place for years if she asked me to.

beneath a tree blossoming with those heavy white flowers tinted with pink, beneath a highway overpass.

wanderlust, maybe, is what it's called.

being a coward, too, perhaps.

but it's there, it creeps on me, this urge to escape. to find a small town and work honestly for a one bedroom apartment in a house filled with quiet tenants and books with broken spines.

to cut down tabacco for a week until the sun and the sweat and the blisters in my palms grounds me again and i can return to the anchors calmly and acceptingly.

if ever that is.

and she tells me not to disappear. please.

she won't say it is because she wants me around. or that it is because she needs me around.

i ask why, testing, probing the edges of what might be left of her love for me, wondering if she dreams of me moving my hand over her stomach as i slide behind her.

i ask and she says because.

and sitting on my bed in the dark i begin to grin.

she says because. i said so.

and i start to laugh.

and in my mind i see her sitting on her bed, tv on, lights on, feet crossed, smiling with that dimple.

disappearing comes with a connotation of being unimportant, of being invisible. of being able to just fade away for a time like worn newspaper.

and then you return, a little duller than before maybe, but you return.

and she, there, with her dimple and her laugh and her skin and her mind, she there sees me.

and makes me want to stand up straighter.

to be seen more clearly.