The hardest part is knowing I'll survive.

I don't want to survive. I don't want to simply exist. There has to be more than that. Not even I have a bottomless pit of attention and love and care to give you. I am bound to come up lacking at some point. A sputtering engine. An empty tank.

I have sung the high harmonies for you. Faded into the background when you wished it. I have played the fool, painted my face many colors, reached into my heart and laid it bare for you. I have ripped myself open and spilled my guts. Shown you what's there, what is really there. Yet it is a fart in a whirlwind. All of it.

It is television noise in the background.

I want to get in my car and drive across America. Kinda like Forrest Gump. Only instead of running I want to sit my butt in the Dream, turn up the radio, and cruise from one end of the United States of America to the other. Maybe I'll cross her three or four times, like Forrest did.

Just me and the road and the radio. Maybe when I sing the high harmonies for myself, they will mean something. When I sing them for me, perhaps they will be angels whispering mysterious truths of the gods.

The hardest part is knowing I'll get by.

I don't want to get by. To make do. I want to roll down the windows, put my face in the wind and let it blow you out of my heart. I don't want to think about you any more. Don't want to care about you. Don't want to carve myself up to spoil on your silver platter.

I have put off my life too long. Neglected my own fulfillment. I have waited for something that is never going to come and I'm tired of waiting. I have followed the rules, broken the rules; done the right things, done the wrong things; searched for my soul and found it in the depths of all that mankind has to offer. It is a whim to you. It is nothing.

It is a bogus stamp on a postage-due envelope.

I want to get in my car and head north. North would be nice this time of year. Cooler breezes, brighter skies. Newer illusions, fresher scenes, happier endings. Or maybe I'll go east to Louisiana. I could be there in a few hours, soothing my troubled ears with the lilting cadence of Cajun French. Throwing back some of that chickory coffee, a hot beignet melting on my ravenous tongue, the smells of the docks and the salty brine of the Gulf wafting through my nostrils.

Just me and the seagulls and the ships. They will tell me their stories and maybe I'll tell them mine. And when they speak they will share their peace, their brotherhood, their companionship.

The hardest part is knowing one day I'll smile.

I don't want to smile again, not if I have to smile without you. I want you to be the reason I smile, you the one who brings me back to the source, who sends chills down my spine.

On the morning that I awaken and yours is not the first image to enter my mind, my heart will break. The only thing worse than loving in vain is letting go in necessity. Forgetting. Loving again. Letting love die from lack of nourishment. You gotta water it once in a while. Throw a little fertilizer on it. Prune back the weeds. Or else you gotta watch it wither.

It is a lovely photograph in a dusty scrapbook.

Just me and the highway and the signs. Go here. Go there. Destination this exit. No passing when yellow line is in your lane. I will follow the signs and they will take me where I need go.

The hardest part is knowing.