independence day is lonely

I woke up today remembering people I have lost touch with, best friends who vanished long before I left home, who moved to the coasts and beyond, who disappeared into families and jobs, and all of the other places where I couldn’t follow, or didn’t want to. I miss them, and I miss the person I was when I loved them, tripping mushrooms, falling backward through my life, and landing gently on a front porch pillow where the full moon is just beginning to eclipse. We ate ice cream together and took long walks or drove out into the Missouri farmland as we philosophized the great truths of our generation. Although I always had the sense you understood far more than I about the mysteries of modern time, and the wheel that turns it. Do you remember? We laid on our backs on the wide green lawn and I told you that I was afraid, and you told me not to be, or to be brave even when the world looked dangerous, because we could always find our way back to this safe place, and our family of misfits. And even though your wild smile and the electric buzz of streetlight, or the pulse of noontime in the deep woods and deer ticks, yes, even though the purple mist over the park at dawn is a part of my life’s story, I don’t even have your phone number anymore.

So, don’t say facebook. Don’t say e-mail. Say you’ll come to visit me, in the rocky mountains. Say you have a blanket in the floor to sleep on, a pillow and a good book to lend me. Say you’ll meet me in Missouri on April 15, 2014, for the next total lunar eclipse visible from America. If today you feel the ether quiver like a dream-time replay of real life, and you find yourself watching my face in sepia on the movie screen of your imagination, see me smiling and waving from across the universe, feel me loving you. Find me someday, when we both least expect it. If you ever feel like coming home, know that home is looking for you in every crowd. –Ruby

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