you wonder, sometimes, about the future. about where you'll be in ten years. who will still be in your life.

and you can imagine, on that sunday ten years from now, standing in your kitchen, barefoot, drinking the sweet ice tea, feeling all the people you've ever loved somewhere out there.

you can imagine the way your heart will be pulled to colorado or boston or kansas city.

you havent spoken to them in years, not since you got up and disappeared that july.

they trailed after you, sending mail to your house, and after that, to your parents house. they cornered your sister in shopping malls, asking her what they had heard from you.

and your sister, over broken, fuzzy phone lines newly installed in some town small enough to be an after thought on the map of that country no one in your family ever went to, she mentioned them in passing.

how she was engaged. how the other one was finishing up school, finally. how the other still picked up the violin when the leaves changed and fell, how she played in the dark with the windows open, the wind moving in and the music you only heard played once flying out the screen.

and you nodded, changed the conversation.

but now you're back.

and you're barefoot, warm, in this small kitchen, drinking sweet ice tea.

you've been to places. you've read things. you've written and taken pictures, recorded your life for strangers to read and respond to.

there was that wednesday, four years ago, you fell out of the tree you climbed just to prove to some girl with a light in her eye that you could climb. you fell onto a rock that split your shoulder open.

there was no numbing, just some ice quickly placed, removed, and stitches tossed in to stop the bleeding.

you can feel the scar, there, in the kitchen.

somewhere in the house is a woman you will go to bed with tonight.

a beautiful woman, with muscle and fever inside and a passion for something that isn't quite you, but you both know that, so it's okay.

your passion isn't quite for her either.

it won't be quiet. it won't be easy or slow. it never is with you two, but thats why you keep coming back.

you'll feel her fingernails near your scar.

you'll feel her teeth and her heels.

and your insides will be pulled in different directions.

maybe still arizona, maybe now in washington and new york, or still in nashville.

at the end of the night, with an empty glass near the bed, you'll stand up and disappear again.

following something you couldn't quite describe those ten years ago. age, time, it hasn't helped any.