today we escape: [She would have been a legend with or without that kind of a song]

Four years ago I exerted all my physical strength and gripped the wooded pane in my palms, pushed it up, opening the century old window against the late October air. I expected it to be colder than it was, to burn the wet in my eyes. But it was warm. It blew over my face, massaging my features, its late night city scents catching in my nostrils. It tempted me, and I breathed it in deep, held it in my lungs for some time; gave it time enough to swirl through my insides, to properly feed my brain.

I looked out my friend's appartment window on Orange street and realized the size of it was more than forgiving for my body to climb through. One foot, now the other. Four city stories up, it couldn't hurt, I was sure. No, the air was comfortning, welcoming, even urging. It's scents, it's feel was all too famililar; took me to places inside my head so vivid I didn't need to close my eyes to see them. And most vivid of all was the sound of a guitar ringing my favorite compilation of chords and wild notes, becomming more complex with each day of practice, with each hour of creative input. He knew his sound would find me, that it would call me across towns and down roads and out of the protection of my childhood home. He knew I would follow that song anywhere.

Below me the sidewalks were completely empty, cars had deserted their parallel parking spaces and I remembered my seven block alone walk home. Trash bags sat clustered in patches down the street and I figured it must be trash night. I swung my feet, they were bare and the air clung to them, particularaly between my toes where my feet were warmest. The swinging breeze cooled them off tremendously, and I realized for the last fourteen minutes I had been picking at the white rubbery paint that had layered on the ancient windowsil. I rested my head against the pane and let his song take over me again. Let myself find my favorite part, the part where the tune completely slowed more than half time, and his strumming changed, dragged almost, up the neck of the guitar, hitting all the right notes, making every inch of my body ache in its beautiful longing sound.

I longed for something, too.

I told him, "I'm not as clever, boy, I'm just not as pretty," and he knew I was right. He knew there were people and lifestyles more exciting, more beautiful than I would ever be. He knew I was right, so he kept on, his song reaching me countless years away.

And I wonder where the last four years have gone, because I've done nothing but try to stop them from happening. I wonder where the last nine years have gone, because I've done nothing but try to write about them, pathetically. The closest I have come to uncovering, to reliving the lost is in revisiting places that have been developed and in looking for people busy with new pasttimes.

I've changed too, I want to tell them, but nothing for the better. We have all gone downhill.

He has given up everything wild about himself for an ordinary way of life. She has done something similar, and I have done nothing but watch and compare their words and actions to ones they had done and said years ago. And I long for particular clothes and a kind of happiness I had only with them; and a certain kind of summer smell and a scent carried only through air. And when I sat four stories above the uneven city pavement I smelled it, luring me. It hooked me through the lip and pulled me outside of my friend's window, and for a second I expected to fall years into history. But a new guitar song broke the one inside of my head.

I twisted my torso around to see Dustin stroll casually in through his bedroom door, his own guitar strapped over his shoulder with his ridiculous crooked grin and I recognized the pull that was keeping me from where I wanted to be, and I promised him I would not go quietly.