Aurora Borealis

The lights in the sky have always meant home. The North. Miles of flat road and high beams and no one else around. A gift from above not meant to be explained or counted on or captured — just experienced.

They shut you up and glue you to your driver’s seat on the side of the road where you pull over to watch them move.

You can’t go out and find them, you can just hope when the conditions are right that they will come. You can only be ready to stop what you are doing if they choose to appear. You can only consent to their capricious ways.

It was like that with us, I couldn’t make you do anything. I couldn’t make you love me or believe that I loved you. I could just be ready to stop, those few times when things were good. Stop what I am doing and be in the moment, knowing it will not last.

I still read your emails sometimes when I want to be sad.

I still wonder if you were the one I was supposed to figure out how to be with, but I was too young and too dumb to figure out how to make you want to be with me.

You are still a fixed point in my history even though I think I have also moved on.

Because I could set a watch by the times I think about you. You have become a benchmark in my life. The familiar thing I hope to catch in my review mirror when I am driving at night.

You are still a mark in the distance I can use to find my way. When your ghost comes around he is still comforting, familiar, fleeting.

When your memory finds me, you still feel like home.