She's not 'running away'. There's a negative connotation to those words: one that she can't easily escape. It sticks to the roof of her mouth. She's just 'getting out of here'. That's it. She's forging her own way. She's packing her things in a suitcase, something that she will be able to carry down the street, into the bus, onto the train into the city. She counts her cash. It's enough. It'll be enough.
I have dreams like this.
I've built my own personal Jericho. Walls are temporary; they will crumble, but for now we hide. I am not stagnating, suffering, lying. I am saving myself instead. At night I pull myself onto the kitchen counter and practice self destructive habits. They are quiet, elusive. You won't see them unless you watch. Look for a blurry eye or a shaking hand, a hint of too much medication. The doctors deny both my future and the fleeting fragility of my mind. I surrender only in sleep, in dreams. I wait for the day that these walls can break and the girl with the suitcase can take the train far away.
Ice is clinging to the branches in Detroit. Winter reminds me why we're alive. I want to cut off all my hair, watch it fall to the bathroom floor. Tell the girl to get the fuck out of here before it's too late. She'll swivel on the chair, watch the black hair fall. Listen to my brother and I fight. "Why are you so unhappy? Why don't you try? Where is your medication going? Who are you, anymore?" "You don't have to deal with me, you know you don't." "I know I don't." Commence with awkward silence, because we both know it's my fault. It is, after all. Hair falling to the bathroom floor like feathers.
I'm not, by nature, a particularly dramatic person, which probably explains my desire to get out of this place. Respite comes like a drug. Late night car rides, heat blasting. Drink jack and coke and sit on cold stoops. Laugh with a stranger. Our hollowed insides are starving for something else. We cram inside crowded rooms and somehow, we don't touch. That's what I never understood. How we never touch. Our eyes never meet.
That girl is going to take the train far away. She says she's starting over, but no one is going to believe her. They all say that. Half of them come back. She's not going to do that, because she's desperate. She's more desperate than I am. Because I'm still here, in the freezing rain, with the lengthening shadows and the grey skies.
You say, I think I'm getting out of here, I think I'm meeting someone beautiful, I think I'm going to California. And I'm begging you, no, please don't, you, and you, and you--you're the only good things about this part of town, and the snow is falling in Detroit, and it gets cold without you. Take me with you, because my reserves are nearing empty and Jericho is coming down. The ropes are wearing thin, and Jericho is coming down. It's all coming down.