circa august 2006

so it is 2:30 a.m. and i have just finished writing out all of my feelings to someone i will never know again and perhaps never knew to begin with.  illegible words on a tear spattered page have begun to bleed together never to be read...never meant to be read.  her mother tucks her into bed and i say good night knowing that tomorrow i will be taking her to the hospital for an indeterminant stay.  though against her will, it is something that must be done for her own self preservation...or lack thereof.  her mother speaks with me briefly concerning the logistics of relocating her belongings from our one bedroom apartment in the flats.  it seems that the responsibility is on my shoulders.  my exhausted body wants to shudder at the thought of the task that lies before me but can do no more than blink and blink.  i should not have blinked.  in between blinks she had managed slip out the front door wearing nothing more than her pajama bottoms and the night shirt i had given her years ago.  i can only assume she knew what was in store for her the following morning.  i don't want this anymore than she.  so it is 3:00 a.m. and i am in my little green car scouring suburbs smelling burnt rubber from my screeching tires.  to the east is the freeway and to the north train tracks.  i can only assume the worst.  i careen my car through a construction site near the tracks only to get my front wheel stuck in the soft earth.  as i frantically push my car out of the ditch i decide to call my home.  i tell my mother and father that i love them...words i had held back for years and years out of angst and spite.  i can only assume they think i am crazy for calling them at such an ungodly hour.  i deliriously enter a gas station crusted in mud and ask the attendant if he has seen a barefoot girl wandering around lost...to no avail.  so it is 4:00 am and i receive a call from a good samaritan saying that she has been located.  i arrive with her mother and law enforcement to some woman's home to find her standing on the front lawn shivering in the cold.  she had shed the night shirt i had given her years ago.  i can only assume it is because i had given it to her years ago.  we drive her back to her home.  she dresses as police wait impatiently at the front door.  she says goodbye to her mother and kisses me on the cheek.  then the police take her away.  so it is 6:00 a.m. and i walk sleepless towards the sun until it rises.  when you devote yourself to another and that other loses the will to live the you that remains is barely alive.  i can only assume nothing.