Ten thousand words swarm around my head, Ten million more in books written beneath my bed, I wrote or read them all when searchin’ in the swarms, Still can’t find out how to hold my hands....
The couch rustled as he shifted all his weight onto his one good leg. The mounted deer heads on the wall stared down with permanent fascination through glossy eyes. He reached his hand out and brushes the fingertips lightly up and down his arm.
"What are you thinking," he asks with eyes so dark it's unclear where the pupil ends and the retina starts.
"Nothing" I reply, which is only half-truth. I'd spent the week traveling back and forth multiple times across a three hundred mile stretch. I'd spent my nights taking care of others, and hadn't had a minute to myself in days. And to top it all off I had a conversation with a loved one that left me feeling like I had been slapped across the face. Mix it all together and I was restless and unsure, stuck in a permanent state of anxiety.
But he was fascinated by the adventuresome, brave, non-complicated me. Not the preoccupied one. In an effort to let the weeks worries drain away, I tried to focus on the T.V. I filled my glass with yet another drink, and swirled the ice. I even rearranged my legs on the couch to try and get comfortable, but nothing did the trick.
He sensed the restlessness, stared at me, then stood up and said, "let's go for a drive, now"
As I hike myself up into the passenger seat of his truck my mind immediately calms itself. He turns on his brights and rolls out of the drive. The soothing noise of gravel crunching under tires reaches out to console me. The miles roll by without even leaving the ranch. The lights catch on the desert sage and lavender, the cacti and even an occasional mesquite tree.
I roll down the window to remind myself what a temperature less than 100 degrees feels like, and let the wind blow away the last of the nerves. I pulled my barefoot onto the dash and stretched my toes towards the windshield, leaving ten little circles on the inside of the glass.
His eyes stray from the dusty deserted road, scan the length of my legs and land on my feet. The ones that are desecrating his truck.
'I'll have to detail the inside of this truck tomorrow' he says, as he rolls his eyes, mentally adding it to his to-do list. I laugh, knowing how much status in Texas comes from a big truck. Especially in his line of work.
He smiles, pleased with the rise he has gotten out of me. And we continue down the road, his dark black eyes gleaming in the cast-off light from the headlights.
...And after we are through ten years, of making it to be the most of glorious debuts, I’ll come back home without my things
‘Cause the clothes I wore out there I will not wear ’round you, And they’ll be quick to point out our shortcomings
And how the experts all have had their doubts
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