Friday. I raced south out of town. Same ritual. Different heart. I wondered how long I've been heartbroken. Wondered how long it would be before I found a way to cover it up again.

I remembered January, February, March and April. Resisting the urge to lay on the hardwood floor with the sun streaming in, when all I wanted to do was soak in the green paint and hurt. Instead, I got up and told myself to get on with things. But then only ended up sitting at my desk, staring out into space. Trying to write it all away in yellow ink.

Saturday. Driving circles, searching for a parking space. Eventually, I thought, things will change or fade or stop and I will go back to the way I was before. And then, I realized there is no back once you've gone through. There is no back. Recalled another season in which the only right thing seemed to be through. A green mountain and a tunnel on the road towards Portland.

I was twelve or thirteen. He kept on asking me about my family, if everything was alright. I didn't know what he meant and couldn't understand why he kept on asking. I'd like to travel back in time to the dark basement and ask him how he knew.

I found the courage to say no. Stopped expecting different results from the same insanity.

"Where are you?" I thought into the closet, as if to know another world behind the shirts. And in the midst of the thickness, the darkness, and warm enclosure of cotton, I realized that I was searching for an old version, a broken illusion. The comfort of my old expectation is gone and in its place is something clean and new and unfamiliar. Like a new clutch. It has stopped slipping, but you still long for the old one because you knew how to handle it. You could at least count on it finally failing some day.

We've opened the door to a new open field. The stretch is vast and the horizon impenetrable. The beauty and the air is frightening to clouded eyes and musty lungs. Yet we know it is good and He is content with the hours we must stand still just to take it all in.

Because there is no back. Only through.