I'll probably go visit my parents on Thanksgiving. I'd hate to miss the way my father nods at my mother's sisters and brothers then steps backward into the shadows until he becomes them. We're having the mess at my aunt's in Seminole. Dad always drives separately. He makes his escape without saying goodbye. Leaving my mother, my sister, my brother, and I to explain the hermit.

I never ride with him. Haven't rode in a car -- just him and I -- since high school. I would lay my head against passenger window. Listen to tires press gravel deeper into the red earth. He never asked my thoughts on God, though a minister. He never asked about my classes, though a former teacher. He never asked about girls, though my father. Glen Campbell, however, he'd talk about Glen Campbell. Claimed I always looked like him. When I was a child, he'd even part my hair sharply and take pictures. What a good, little Glen Campbell. If he took his eyes off the road long enough to hone in on a power line, "Wichita Lineman" inevitably became the topic of conversation. That song would delta off into "Rhinestone Cowboy," "Gentle on My Mind," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix." Soon we'd be in town, knowing each other no better than before the departure. But we arrived. That's something.

To this day, no occasion could coerce me into parting my hair. With the exception of Mr. Campbell's funeral of course.

Tim will love your family. As I did. Still do. I thought he might only be a consolation, but looks like he's a trophy. Happy Thanksgiving, Ms. Anna Prine. I thank you. The fowl of the air thank you. The beasts of the field thank you. Tell them they're welcome.

South Maine
the white beaches of Ogunquit
where the tide shrinks the shoreline
where the mud is made new
Lucy corkscrews her toes
digging deeper and deeper
What are you doing sweetheart
though she's my niece I pretend she's my daughter
I want to hit bottom so I can climb to the top
though she's four she's wiser than me
squawking seagulls float above
an orange glow seeps off the edge of the clouds
as they hustle west
Josh
Yes
Is the ocean forever
Of course I say as a wave washes her feet clean
*I wish we were oceans

Strange to be a few barstools down from you at O'Brien's. Yet, a decade away from you in time. Tim is handsome. I doubt that means anything coming from me, but I didn't exactly talk to him. Not much else I can say. You're still out of his league. Always dating down. Thank you.

When Tim went to the bathroom, I wanted to cut through the smoke and tell you I love you. Not in a gesture of romance. Not in an act of heartbreaking bravery. Really just to say it. I haven't said it to anyone in such a long time. I love you.

Before I saw you, I went to visit my sister at the hospital. Jessica switched to the night shift last week. She gets the pleasure of telling cranky old men no more Vicodin, and in act of mercy, God grants her a week of sunrises to be viewed from the wide windows of the 13th floor.

The nurse tending the desk told me Jess was making the rounds. I creeped into four or five dark rooms before I found her. Might've even woken a bald woman in an iron lung. Do they make iron lungs anymore? Looked like an iron lung.

Anyways, I found her in a room grabbing a meal tray and putting on its "kosher" lid to be trashed. "Hey, man. Henri, this is my brother Josh. Josh this is Henri," Jess introduced. I shook his hand.

He looked up at me through black, thick-framed glasses. Henri had one silvery capped tooth that became visible when he smiled. The smile crumpled and wrinkled his face like an old newspaper.

"If you want you can just stay in here," my sister said. "Henri's a cool guy and I need to go grab his sleeping medication."

I told her sure. Sat down next to Henri. He looked to be in his early sixties. Very lean. Sharp jaw. Large knuckles. If he ever stepped in a ring, I bet he made a hell of a fighter.

Henri removed his glasses. Placed them in his lap next to a collection of Chekov stories.  I told him I really liked Russian literature. No matter a person's class they always seem to have servants. A butler to tell them their molding slice of bread was ready, and a maid to serve it.

"I feel just as lucky. Your sister has treated me like I just walked in from Hollywood Boulevard." I asked him what he was in for -- like it was prison.

"Fractured hip. The most cliche of old-timer injuries. Not proud of it," he laughed softly. "I have been biking across the country and a little white sedan didn't take much notice of me -- well, until after they hit me."

****. I asked why he was making the journey. His wife died in the summer. His life stopped. "Life is measured in the stops," he told me. "When your job, your hobbies, sometimes even your friends all become irrelevant and time doesn't matter -- you've stopped. I locked myself in our house for a month. Told the kids I didn't want them to visit. I got the best woman on the planet. I don't feel guilty for taking her. Because believe me, I had to earn her," he looked to the side for a moment. Staring at the black television screen.

Then he told me that life may be measured in stops, but greatness is measured in starts. Journeys. I thought you'd like that, Ms. Anna. Henri then asked me that terrible question, "got a wife?" as if to make sure the conversation didn't center on him.

I told him I had gotten a divorce three years ago. He asked if I had moved on. I confessed, I've hobbled. His heavy brow grew heavier. His hands pulled the bed table to the middle. He asked me to hand him a pen off the dresser. He uncapped it. "What year were you born?" 1986.

"Okay, and you were divorced in 2009?" Yep. "And you haven't started over?" Nope. Henri wrote something on the napkin and pushed the bed table to me. With a shiver, a weight passed through me -- going upwards. The napkin read,

"Josh
1986-2009, 2012-"

"Don't waste three years of your life again."

I only went to the hospital because Jess has a friend she wanted to introduce me to. Her name is Macie, I think. Macie called in sick. I'll call it a fair trade. I've written too much again. I hope you read this late at night, and when you awake, I hope the coffee tastes new. Your newspaper isn't wet with rain. I hope your journey starts or restarts. You deserve the same unknown energy that seems to be coming from under the concrete.

fall has never felt more like falling
than my head on your shoulder
and your hand on my hip

but there isn't a **** thing poetic
about things you can't have and
things you don't want but
i just remember so much

and it comes in flashes, like
laughing too hard at jim carrey
being regulars wherever we went
getting caught in the cold and
just plain getting caught

you told me if i walk slower,
i won't get as wet from the rain.
so i tried it, and it didn't work.
and where's the poetry in that?

the only thing i'm good at is
keeping you around, but
always too far away.
if i can't make us sound pretty,
i suppose that means i'm over it
and if i'm sick of trying to, well
i suppose that means we're okay

and if i keep trying...
i suppose that means i love you.

i don't know which birds sing in the mornings.
i like sunrises, but only if i haven't been to bed yet.
i like to emerge from my sheets and pillows when the sun is high
and the shadows are gone.
before then, the sun is too young and exuberant
and i have such an old and heartbreakingly tired soul.
the sun was barely over the old church outside your bedroom,
painting the bare walls of your room with the colors of the last supper.
you woke me up, soft and sweet,
like i know you can be, when you put to rest your premature bitterness and apathy.
i don't know how long you lay beside me, the ***** of your feet pressed against my shins,
your pinky finger tracing the freckles on my arm in the same pattern, countless times.
but it was the softest way i've ever woken up, and it reminds me of summer.
it reminds me that bruised does not mean broken,
and even shattered pieces can be reassembled.
it reminds me that there is love everywhere,
and we once had it in the most morning-sun way.

I guess I saw her at the third and final bar I went last night. You would have liked watching her. Her face cut like stone -- a reincarnation of an Easter Island statue -- and like those statues, if you kept digging I'm sure she had a body underneath.

From my end of the bar, it looked like she ordered a gin and tonic. She barely drank it, but that's not to say she didn't touch it. She stabbed the ice repeatedly with a cocktail stirrer as if to say give me something to look forward to.

You were right about riding into bars lone wolf. It only works during the afternoon. That's all there is then. Thirsty wolves. But at night, everyone is paired off neatly and wrapped into each other like pretty little presents with shiny red bows.

I agree about the crippling lack of ***. But unlike you, I wouldn't call myself frustrated. Just crippled. And I know if you'd been at the bar, you would have told me to approach Easter Island, but I've been lonely so long that I've grown addicted to the feeling. It's a blanket of sorts. And it's been cold lately.

A man sat next to me at the bar. Corduroy jacket, red sweater over white collared shirt. His hair messily spiked, his face messily shaved, and he kept chatting up a sad-eyed woman in a sadder black dress. I don't remember much of the conversation because I was trying not to eavesdrop. He did say something about time though. He said it was all a straight line. That's the reason we forget things. Progress. Progress makes the people we used to be peel off. The molted skin gets carried off by the wind. I thought you'd like that. Though I don't agree with it.

If time is a straight line, why is what I had for breakfast right next to a three-year-old memory of sleeping beside Karen two weeks after our divorce. It all seems disjointed to me. Not random. But at least partially broken.

Easter Island wore purple pants. I forgot to mention that. She also had a bronze crucifix around her neck. And long brown curls. The cross would have been off-putting if I'd seen her a few months ago, but as you know I'm trying to fix myself. A little dose of religion might be good for me. If nothing else at least a dose of wild kindness.

I apologize for talking so much about myself. So, return the favor. This morning, I read from that Callahan book you got me. The chill in the air made me wish you were in the bed beside me. Reading over my shoulder. Though that was in another window of time. One next to my memory of you putting cinnamon in the coffee grounds before you started a brew.

For what it's worth, I miss you.