Midnight Rider

This is not the life I thought I would be living.

We are on the phone and my friend's voice squeezes through the wires, bounces off the cell towers. Her words hit me from all directions.

Nor, I, dear friend, nor I.

Her husband dead, suddenly, accidentally. She does not doubt his devotion. He is present in every cell, every corner, yet he is missing, missing from the kitchen doorway, the ride to work, his side of the bed, the other side of the argument.

My husband . . .  I do not know what to say. My husband is forbidden to speak to me, to touch me. It is for the best, but was not always so.

Sometimes grief comes from nowhere, that vast nothingness. It appears as a cowboy hat or an Allman Brothers song:

Well, I've got to run to keep from hidin'
And I'm bound to keep on ridin'
And I've got one more silver dollar

And I don't own the clothes I'm wearing
And the road goes on forever
And I've got one more silver dollar

And I've gone by the point of caring
Some old bed I'll soon be sharing
And I've got one more silver dollar
But I'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no. . . .

(copyright Gregg Allman and Robert K. Payne)

I hear him in the high notes and I quiver. The longing I thought was gone ... is not. It courses through me like quicksilver and I wonder (as does my friend), where is that man who awakened every passion? Does he no longer exist? What form has he taken? Of this earth or not, what does it matter? All is changed. In an instant, all is . . . I don't know is all.

Midnight. Longing is like quicksilver, toxic and pulsing through my veins. I  play the song again and again.