Portland

April 10, 2015  By: Christopher Russell 

Cars packed full of furniture and dogs and tears and memories as she takes off for the other Coast and undoubtedly equal joyous young ramblings; adventures bound to be found on the other side of this, our heavy, sweating continent, holding us up with its great, wide shoulder to cry on and high enough also to see through the mirror.

The last night of drinking; awful but cheap blue cocktails and rantings on how she will be missed but all knowing, accepting, passively, that she has actually gone already; the energetic preparations in a rush, producing a shell and a blinding wall of inescapable change, the unbeatable waves, too big, that come and take us and tumble us all over and through the sandy bleakness of life.

Then standing, smoking in chilly parking lots, clinging to last second goodbyes, teary-cheeked, eyes with no more to come, wells run dry as the bitter, biting wind freezes the memories like crystals on the weathered windowpane of time and past youth.

And she, our friend, of a glue, known by all, so loved, to be seen now and then not for at least a year, through countless screens and the idea of knowing what we have now will make it feel like she hasn’t gone at all.

And each to each in stony personal inner-lookings, own future reflections and swallowing the wonder like birds, hungry and confused in the wild ripping square case of strange and unsettling reality.

And staying up ‘til bleak winter dawn, singing, mind gone, trying to grasp the spirit of innumerable years spent drinking and rhapsodizing and jamming and swimming and talking and learning and loving one another as only friends truly can.

And then sighing in the wakeup headache of morning, exhausted, still drunk, stale air, uncomfortable pull-out beds and dried blood in nose and spitting the stumble to sink to cough and rinse and flopping in rickety chairs over coffees, tasting lingering medicinal cocktail essence, bleary-eyed, rivulets of cheek make-up, hair twisted, thinking over previous night, mulling the precious night, the wild uproarious still-ringing-in-the-ear night-crashings and glancing over shoulder, sensing now she sits, bouncing, in the air behind us.

Contributor's Note: Christopher Russell loves the way the air smells in summer before it rains.