Going Home - A Short Story

It takes most people a few days to get on schedule after crossing numerous time zones. Some try staying up late in the night, seeing the forms of trees resolve themselves into abstract shapes, then fading to total dark, disappearing as if into a well. I've tried everything. Staying on the same time zone that I live at home, sleeping on the plane across the Atlantic (not when I was flying it mind you) and cloaking my windows with blankets and ear plugs worthy of a Nascar pit crew in my ear, as I bury myself into my sheets and try and get some sleep. It usually doesn't work.

With only hours on the road, already I long to be home.

But sometimes one just can't get to sleep, thoughts tingling like a phantom limb. If that is the case you would be better served with simply opening the drapes and sitting to watch the city awake. So many cities. So many thoughts. What would become of us if anyone could guess our most secret anticipations, those fragments of want and desire that form at 34,000 feet, shuttered into a nervous aluminum tube of energy, a long flight into a strange city. Thoughts that trail behind you, contrailing wisps of need that follow you back to your room.

Certainly, I put a lot of them out here for the world to see, but only a handful of people know me in every way, most seeing just the woman with the goofy sense of humor, or the shy one, hiding under a kevlar gumdrop exterior, hoping the strength that flows within will seep out onto the surface, a sheen to reflect the daggers of the world.


But what about those inner thoughts, those you don't tell anyone? Think to someone you once loved, or perhaps do now. If you had known then, what you know know, about your desire and theirs, would you have run away from the intensity of their gaze, those eyes possessing a wisdom all their own. Or would you, knowing what you know now, run to them with an ease and a comfort that no random coming together of two people could ever have produced.

Or would you have simply run away?

You will think of many things, there in those hours that sleep doesn't come. Of the sip of warm coffee, a plate of bread and fruit, succulent nourishment there in the early morning hours. And you may dream of another form, far away, the body curled into itself while the cool blue fingers of chill air rising off a cold lake, trace over eyelids closed to the world.


Innermost dreams. Some call it the "bucket list", things they wish to do before they die. I think of it not as a bucket, but as a body of water, my toes laid bare and flat upon the endless shore, waiting to dive in, the anticipation of something in the air long before I took the first leap.

We hear the words of the preacher telling us of how we should look to glory with no regret but only joy. But we are not ready to quit this earth, still believing that what is within the scope of our passionate want is within the scope of our passionate hope. For there are things you know you have to do, things you have to say, for that future to be opened to you. Think back to one last drive with someone. They said all the right words, made all the right moves, but love to them was simply matter of fact, like talking about finding the equal distance between two separate points, about the body's scientific response to a natural need, not the souls' response to a need to live.

The highway rose and fell underneath your feet, your bare toes curled on the floor boards, staring straight ahead as you talked, perched on the edge of a cliff of a car seat trying to say the words that are your escape. Outside, the lines of the road play out like Morse code, tapping out the miles to the end. The skeleton forms of trees flow past, making the words that came from him, rising and falling without emotion or passion, seem like hollow lectures to empty halls. You could barely speak, not that it mattered, for, like duty and honor, this could only end one way.

Up ahead, a large outcropping of stone. What kind of stone is it, you think to ask, but you don't, for he will have a matter of fact answer to that, as he has an answer for everything that should carry emotion but never will, the words a strange counterfeit that makes no mark upon you. Rock hard, the decision to be made, constructed by some force of will, of unquestionable knowing of what you both want and what you won't settle for.


You can only sit there, with a deer in the crosshairs look, caught in that moment of life and motion, where if you do not do something, you will cease to live in that very moment between splendor and speed and the piercing of a heart. "We can still be friends" you think and you know that's a lie that slams shut like the door, the sound muted somehow, the small top of a flip top bottle closing, keeping air out without disturbing what is left inside.

Home, to thoughts of what you both could have chosen, and did not. Thoughts to pack in your suitcase as you leave for another trip that seems to last for years.

The passage of time. Days become weeks, becoming months. A hotel in a strange city, the window open, your thoughts and body in a man's button down shirt, neck exposed, head arched back as if for a first kiss, the body's tendons giving away your desire without outward thought. But the room is empty, the suitcase on the floor, a glass of wine on the table, reports and papers on the desk, scattering with your innermost thoughts.

Thoughts. Of the places and things you wish to do before you yourself are darkness. Wind and cars that race along a road, your form molded to the seat as if made for it, a strong hand on a warm thigh, laughing. Late nights and deep stars, the blue form of a shirt on the floor in front of dying embers.


You sit and you watch, there so far away. Outside, a taxi comes to the front of the hotel. A dashing man in an expensive suit, a not so young woman, gazing up at him with laughter, the dark, wet fire of her hair laying like an exclamation across her cheek, his hands wet with glistening drops as he helps her from the taxi and pulls her close to take her in to safety and discovery.

You notice things. You notice the way he looks at her, this woman who is no longer a girl, as if he measured everything in his sight by the response it drew from her twinkling eyes. He lights her cigarette, with a look and a touch, the flame burning brightly, a star in miniature, expiring into the darkness with the rush of its need.

You smile as they rush on in, never seeing you, traceless in your quiet detachment, the flame now vanished towards the distant moon, stars so far out of reach.

You think of someone else, a voice that paused with emotion when you laid out your hurt and your fear, words that comfort and ears that listened. You wonder if given the choice if you would run away, or if you would stay, and the answer is already there, gathering around you with the wonder of a child.


You look out onto this city in which sleep is a stranger, smelling the curve of a body of water that's seen more than you will ever imagine, the opening light laying supine on the dark cobbled streets, trembling like a lovers first caress. The room is cold, and you wonder if you will ever sleep again as the clock counts those remaining days that hang in the air, like the laughter of innocence, evanescent and hopeful.

With the beat of the clock you say that name, breathing it in and out, the noise of a city's awaking, rising like steam, warming you. You say it once and forever so that it would be gone, though not forever, laid somewhere dark and safe where you know you dare not go.

You picture yourself calling them on your return, even though you know you will not. The sound of that voice a gift, waiting. Would you believe that you can delve deep into your innermost thoughts, to expose those rough wanting edges no one else may ever see, and you can do so with complete trust.

Come over. I've been waiting.

You would be as vulnerable as you will ever be as you take that step, as you let yourself be led inward. The look on their face is your future, your gift, the wanting there, the desire, as they lay you back across a bed in which you will finally sleep.

Home.