Not Good at Being Gone

I am not good at being gone

I said to my wife

when I called her for the fifth time

the first day of my work trip

just to hear her voice

lest I drift into space

and dissolve into nothing

I am not good at being gone

Those last two lines were

a little dramatic, I know

Same night, I texted my wife

I’m dining alone like a weirdo

Where does a belief like that come from

Took me like two seconds to connect it

No one was alone in my hometown

I can only remember one guy

Jimmy was well-known

for drunk-driving his lawn mower

cross-eyed, yelling Buh Liiiiight

He tried to give the young girls rides

We laughed, mocked, and he died

locked in a gas station bathroom

out on the edge of town, alone

God rest that poor soul

Perhaps the farther we get from home

the closer we get to an uncomfortable truth

A truth we work hard to avoid

The truth Jimmy’s life exposed

Here it is: we are all alone

just sometimes less lonely

There is nothing harder than the truth

and nothing more hopeful

What hope is there in being alone?

That we might get good at being gone

and love to be on our own

even yearn for that party of one

and come to our last breath—

whether surrounded by loves

or locked in a gas station bathroom—

at peace and at home with ourself

and whatever may come