I can't remember what time of year it was. I do know that it wasn't cold, and the evening wasn't hot, so that could mean anything between November and March in the deep south.

What I do remember is picking up my best friend from Fort Stewart. He'd just finished his tour in Bosnia, where he had a number of misadventures he wouldn't tell me about until years later. Even then, he discussed the things that happened exactly once. Since that discussion, he's brought up aspects of the conversation here and there. I know he still carries guilt about the men who died at the other end of his sight picture, but he loses less sleep over it as time goes on.

We rolled up to the parade field where they were holding the soldiers in formation. All at once, they were dismissed, and he came running towards us to get in the car. It was backslaps, half-hugs, and laughter the rest of the night.

We ended up going out to a number of college bars that night. We were all on the upper end of college-age at that time, but we didn't stand out in the crowd. It was three of us: me, the triumphant hero on his return, and Brian. Brian was a veteran and a coworker of ours; we all worked at the sheriff's office at the time, and this was a rare night off for me and B.

It was a long walk to the bars from B's place, but it wasn't a bad one. The walk was even shorter after a night of drinking, and we managed to stumble home without incident. If I recall, we decided to strictly stick to beers only that night, so that helped make walking even possible.

Suddenly, Brian and I burst into song with a decidedly off-key rendering of Afroman's "Because I got High," but we somehow managed to recite nearly the whole thing at the top of our lungs. I still smile when I drive by that patch of road where the concert was held on our walk home; it's along railroad tracks that run parallel to low-traffic blacktop. Luckily, there were no homes nearby, but even if there had been, we weren't out too late. Granted, we were too late to serenade the neighborhood, but back then, nobody was around to hear it.

My best friend just laughed and stumbled, staring at us in amazement. He'd never heard the song, and he thought we'd made it up on the spot. The way we were alternating verses, first with me singing one then with B jumping in, it certainly could seem like it was extemporized. We joined each other on the chorus.

By the time we finished, we were home, and it was time for bed, but laughter wasn't left at the door with our shoes. Brian headed up to bed and K and I stayed up a little while longer chatting.

Before he shipped out, I gave him my Timex Indiglo. It was just a little $30 timepiece from Wal-Mart, but Kev never wore a watch. I told him he should probably have one for deployment, so he took it. "Just give it back when you get home."

I was giving him a stupid little goal, something to aim for.

"Thanks for the watch, man. I used it every day." He said, slurring a little, and taking the thing off his wrist, keeping his end of the bargain. I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing, putting it away in my pocket.

I still have that watch. While I don't really wear one anymore, and the one I do wear was a college graduation gift from my mom, I use the one that saw action overseas when I go kayaking.

I heard Afroman come on my radio when I was driving the other day, and it brought me back to that night so many years ago.

My thoughts turn now to Brian, gone now for over three years.

I wish I'd given him a goal, something to aim for, a reason to come home, a bargain to keep.

Instead, all I can give him are fond memories on a page.

I miss your dumb, annoying ass, B. I wish you were still here to irritate us and make us laugh, man.

It was a boxy, bright orange hunk of metal. But that battered 1985, four wheel drive Chevy pickup in its hideously orange fleetside glory was oh so much more for the 45 year old man stood watching it go into the scrap yard.

He was lean and with a broad athletic frame his once solid black hair was now peppered with some gray. For the middle-aged Ronald Hershcorn that old pick up was trove of memories.

His day had bought brand new off a lot in Little Rock Arkansas. Ronald was five years old-- having been conceived in the back of a Volkswagen Beetle in 1980. There was many days fishing trips, vacations and other major life events in that truck including hard lessons. Ron found himself the hurricane of the teen years and was tempestuous and bumbfuzzled. He wasn't an adult neither was he a child. While on the way to a sporting goods store one day his father gave him the "talk."

Trying hard to be "cool" he'd completely marred the reputation of a cheer leader his so called friends had mocked him for liking. He fabricated an account of an explicit romantic rendezvous where her "cherry had been popped."

It spread like a California wildfire through out the high school.

Ronald's dad had caught wind of the situation and one day while fixing up the truck he sat his son on the tailgate and they had very long discussion.

Ronald still remembered that day very well. It was like acid reflux to his brain. Why did he do something so stupid to a person he had deep feelings for. He'd made it right with her but she never spoke to him again he didn't blame her.

Eleven years after it rolled of the lot the pickup became his. He was Sixteen and still mixed up and dumb. He didn't drink and drive but he did go to fast one night. It cost him a new headlight and a month without his wheels.

The truck went with him to college. He thought it be cool to paint orange because that was one of the school colors. It had been that hue ever since. Many nights were spent with his buddies in the back of that truck weather it was going to the burger place for quick refuse during finals or waiting for a movie to start or just talking.

Some nights were spent in solitude washing away the pains of life with the sounds of Skid Row or Metallica. "I'm 18" by Alice Cooper also resonated with him strongly.

While in college he met his wife and they were married in fall of 2001. He scraped up some money and bought a camper for the truck bed. The wedding night was spent there as he and his wife stopped on a deserted road to consumate their union. He was 21 she was 25. It was the night of September 10th 2001 and they were headed to New York City for the honeymoon. They canceled those plans the next day.

Soon a new life entered the world and Ronald spent time in that truck with his own son trying to pass on life lessons.

Well Ronald had been on his own for ten years. The wife divorced him in 2015. Times were hard and his son was in college learning who knows what now days! So the truck was gone now the cost of maintenance on such an old heap having become impractical. That pick up had been if three states seen 6 big moves and the sundering of a stable family. So the truck was gone now but the memories remained.

“No, I love it. Thanks so much, it’s just what I wanted.”

Ending #1: Next stop – the Goodwill three towns over.

Ending #2: I’ll keep this out for at least a month, then shove it in the attic so technically, when asked, I can say, “Of course I still have your present.”

Ending #3: I’ll act like it’s as valuable and delicate as a Ming vase, which is why I’ll find a safe place to keep it so it can’t be broken, i.e. the back of my lower left kitchen cabinet.

Ending #4: I need to strategically position this close enough to the edge of the front entry table so it will inevitably get knocked off and shattered into a thousand pieces the next time my youngest helps bring in the groceries.

Ending #5: It’ll be stored in the hall closet for easy retrieval so it can be prominently displayed at a moment’s notice anytime you text to say you’re coming over for a visit.

Ending #6: “Oh, my sister borrowed it for her (insert whatever holiday recently passed) party and she hasn’t returned it yet.”

Ending #7: If “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” then one of us needs to make an appointment with an ophthalmologist.

You couldn’t understand. So you don’t. You think you do, but there isn’t an ability for you to. That would require a thought beyond you that withstands. Or perhaps it’s just me you can’t care for, beyond an “oh my god” as I vent.

I imagine you couldn’t imagine. Because if you could, and you could feel it and empathize, and yet still treat me the same, I’d have to assume you cruel. I don’t want to. I think you are sometimes. I don’t want to. I remember so many good moments. I don’t want to think I spent a year wrong, after so many years I’ve spent wrong.

But what would you care for what I’ve been through? It’s all some big joke. In how you speak about others using trauma you know I have faced. And I froze. And you stared. And I said nothing, weak as I was. And you said nothing, as insensitive as you were.

I’m not weak now. It took me a while, and many people’s interventions, but I realized what was happening. The cycle of abuse. Chains and circles and cycles and things I told you I didn’t want to ever repeat just to repeat them with you.

I know you think I’ve done something wrong, something worse. You don’t care what you’ve done. You’re quick to excuse whatever it could possibly be, because you have far too much going on, as you always do.

I hear you rant to the stronger version of me. the more disconnected and easily amused version of me. And I feel no sympathy for your experiences. Because you feel nothing for mine.

You never ask. So I never explain. You never apologize, so I never forgive you. You never care beyond yourself, so I don’t seek you out anymore.

I may be lonely, and ostracized at times. But I am no longer your puppet, and I am no longer a second skin to you with no mind of my own. That is healing. That is joy.

And it is unfathomably painful.

There. I take it back,

everything I didnt say.

Finally, I step tentatively into the light, that first step, so fearful, but driven by unstoppable forces,

churning so close to the surface I fear they may spill out.

If only to taste your breath again.

I have found that I am more afraid that goodbye will be too permanent, than I am of having to scrape to your whims,

In the hopes that I might swim through the depths of your sagacious delusion,

Depsite my better judgment, I wish to drown myself in sentimental repetition.

I am letters pecked out one by one

as they stream through the clutter

finding their way the mess of it all

yet revealing no imagined features

no hint of a smile furrowed brow

close your eyes you can't see me

open your mind I'm just words

understood comprehended felt

through the jumble that is you

below beneath objects observable

i have these thoughts

like little flying bugs

that get all tangled up in

my spiderwebbed brain

and once there,

they're stuck.

and the light behind

my eyes kaleidoscopes them -

each one spinning into some

unpredictable image.

and you are one --

one little thought

spawning a thousand more,

infinitely, in every second -

it's all kind of beautiful

but the colors and shapes blind me,

terrify me, keep my eyes open

and my mouth closed.

in moments, the light bounces

itself into words and phrases

- inescapable -

written on the back of my skull

for my eyes when i blink or dream.

i want you more than i want the sun to rise in the morning.

and now that's caught in

the webs too, condemned

to twist around and make

patterns in my brain until,

likely, the day that i die.

13

I held onto you by my teeth.

Enamel tearing, bone chipping.

My friends stare in horror at the blood pouring from my maw,

wounds from a year ago that barely started to scar biting back.

I stand in the pool of it, shaking.

They tell me the wrong you did to me.

The wrong you continue to do.

The wrong my body was aware of when id flinch and bow like a beaten dog away

from joking flailing hands.

The way I would submit to anything you asked of me so I cant even use it against you,

because I let you treat me that way.

Yet around your body in my jaw, I shake my head profusely.

You wouldn't. You couldn't.

You would rejoice in my anguish. Flourish in my floundering. Barely blink at my distraught.

Jokes like barb wire left your lips saccharinely sweet with a smile, so I barely felt the honeyed prongs of metal in my skin.

Until you kept digging. The wounds kept bleeding. The honey was diluted by my pain,

until it was all I could taste.

Losing you was painful. I see you every day, and yet I don’t know you. You look at me with hatred. I look at you like I never knew you.

Hiding in plain sight on my knees looking above the madness.

Praying for an avalanche to whiten my sins that curse and bless.

High in my ivory tower i see your face,i walk to the ledge.

I reach to grasp the understanding of your hidden truth i swore to pledge.

Your face beckons me to walk on the water within your cloud,my fear hanging on a noose.

I step into the unkown,the gallows crumble,I levitate in your hands,all the hell below me I created breaks loose.

You carry me beyond the sentence I so rightfully deserved.I fall back on my knees in defeat.

Your Hand loosens,the noose tightens, the gallows rebuild themselves under my feet.

there are no life guarantees

sure fire money back offers

that evermore love returns

breathless heart pounding

passion pouring hot fluid

if you felt it every hold it

many never have nor will

much less get another shot

later in life body cold tired

joy is in fleeting moments

looking for a second flash

will leave you discouraged

dismayed frustrated empty

looking backwards reliving

a tick in time forever gone