In summer I tend to think about Wyoming – or at least Wyoming as I’ve always imagined it: cruel with weather and an acute loneliness, even the spaces that separate strangers on the street. I can see the lifetimes on the faces of the men and women who threw down their lots to live there; and I know, instinctively, that they respect the land that chose them. And that they somehow hate it, too.
Detroit is a ghost town whose edges are fading out to nothing. In these images of the country I see all of the memories that I still can’t bring myself to forget: an orange-furred cat stirring beneath the neighbors’ hedges; twin sweating bottles of milk in a summery kitchen; the turn of a little girl’s ankle in knee-high grass. Villages long ago put to rest and the cities almost there – but some of us have always loved the dead and the dying, and these mountain towns feel more like belonging than our clapboard homes ever did.
The problem with loving you, you said to me once, is that it makes me weak. I could have told you that. I could have told you that because as soon as you think of the beginning then it’s the end; I could have told you that because it’s only beginnings that I show any aptitude for.
The pity, I see now, is that I think I belong to a place I’ve never even been. I see the honey-colored morning paint the earth in gold-and-bronze, the velvet rolls of thunder that chase away all the light. But when I look at the photographs I see only you: the heartbreaking blue of your eyes and the clever twist of your mouth, the cheekbones that look absolutely Icelandic. You were always achingly vivid and alive, and when you left I mourned every part of you. Even the parts that loathed me in turn.
Happiness isn’t something you feel, I read once – it’s something you remember. And I do remember. The sun spilling a gleam on your rounded shoulders, your hair shorn close as swan-down, the blue eyes, blue bruise. You were a wild animal caged and that is how I took care to approach you: as you paced back and forth in a too-small cage, eyes wild with trepidation and anger both. We could get out of here, I wanted to tell you. We could each take a step and disappear.
You were my phantom limb all along, and I didn’t see it until far too late – the curve of your broad shoulders and blackened eye, the flash of hard white teeth. When you disappeared I buried the memory of you, but some things refuse to rest. Dark hair, darker eyes. We’ll go to Wyoming, were my last words to you, but you said nothing to me in response. And I suppose that was answer enough.