Did you find religion, or was it just more ghosts?

On your birthday we were too busy trying to survive, so there was no dinner, no people tucked behind couches and kitchen counters desperate to yell surprise so they could go to the restroom or get another beer, no unmaking the bed by the force of our movement together. No, all that was left was the petty wish for more years, ones better than the one we were in.

I was going to get you a present. I thought you should know. I was going to throw myself from a very high place and set you free. I got all the way up there, though, and I looked down, and all I could see was you filling out paperwork and calling around to see who could take you to come get my car. I thought, as always, of how we met.

I drove out of the city, I drove west. The windmills there were lining the hills, making lazy pronouncements about what it is to be alive, American, pretending at control. I thought that maybe they were angels, but they weren’t. It didn’t make the things they were saying any less of a miracle.