The razor-thin line between the last gasp of night and sunrise. The sun breaking over a field on your left, bleeding light back into the dead world. The pale moon still hanging. The way the lake and the sky are at this second identically blue.
The motor hums, drowning language.
The Flapjack Shack. The Griddle Haus. The River Bottom Roadside Restaurant.
The deep hunger you feel that touches every nerve, every cell, a hunger that can’t be sated. The way you feel this hunger always, even in sleep.
The antique stand. The U-pick raspberry stand. The wind. The wind smells of water and pine. The green leaves licking white clouds. The gas station with one pump and no attendant and a self-service sign. The radio static. The wind.
The sense of oneness and wonder and contentment.
The way it never lasts.
The way the future can’t be lived, it only hovers before you, everywhere around you, like a note of music, a guitar chord struck, a thing that can’t be seen or touched.
The smell of bacon and coffee as you enter the Real McCoy. The ten-egg omelet. The full pot of coffee the waitress leaves at your table. The waitress Evelyn as object of sexual desire. The monstrous, exhausting, life-affirming dump you take in the Real McCoy bathroom. The toilet so high it feels like a throne.
The joy you feel as you leave the restaurant and the sun hits your face and you get back in the Subaru and back on the road.
The way you fly down 131, winding once again through Grand Rapids and then back out of it. The familiar landscape somehow transformed.
The bright potted flowers along the sidewalks of Plainwell.
The deep green valleys on either side of M-89.
The fatigue setting in, the emptiness, the dull panic, an alarm clock blaring, banging against the love and desire. The certain knowledge that all of these things will live within you and fight for dominance the rest of your days.
The throbbing in your face and shoulder. The wind. The fatigue. The once-yellow fence around the driveway of your house. The way you left little crumbs of yourself in your wake to remember the way to get back.