ghosts of grace
Someone else was driving my pickup, I don’t remember who. I was choking on the dust, body perched on the cab like a newborn calf, awkward and trying not to lose balance. The whole idea was to stand, stand while the truck sped down the dry gravel road, zigging and zagging with the sharp corners, seemingly pitching itself onto one side or the other, always on the edge of going right off the road and tumbling down the brush-covered embankment. If you screwed up, you were going to get hurt pretty good, flying off the cab into those woods and their gaping jaws, trees like teeth. Those woods, man, they looked scary even in the daylight.

It was a dare, and I never fell.

I never got my balance for long either--most of my time plastered flat onto the cab, grabbing anything I could to not slide off, looking for that opportunity, that one small window of chance to get on my feet. Like everything else I did, there was no reason beyond that it was vitally important in that moment to do so. To run that risk of bodily harm, to be stupid. It was easier than love, easier than trying to get the words to mean anything.

That day--I nailed it that day. I saw my moment--a flat stretch of road just before a wicked left curve (always take the left hand path, I remember thinking), a slight slowdown of the truck. I moved from the awkward crouch to standing straight up in one fluid motion, a rare moment of cooperation from a body I never could figure out how to work. The cab vibrating under my feet, the wind smacking me but not tipping me, the exhilarating feeling of being pure motion--for a second, everything ceased to exist, everything just was. I cared not if I would soon be snapped up by the aching jaws of the woods all around me, if the gravel would soon embed itself into my skin. For that one moment, existence became something far removed from myself, far greater. The particulars of my breathing, the broken processes of my mind, the yearnings and dreams, none of it mattered because none of it existed.

Grace. For one moment, grace.

Just before the curve, I turned and leapt into the bed of the truck, hating myself for not daring just a little more, for not holding on to the grace. For valuing tomorrow over being alive in the moment. For perhaps, on a deep level, fearing the pain. My knees hit the green metal of the pickup bed as if to drive home how silly it is to fear the pain, because the pain will always be there, no matter what choices are made. It is simply the way of existence. I cursed myself anyway. The grace left a yearning, a yearning deep in a black hole I’ve never figured out how to fill. If I could play the guitar, if I could sing, if I could write, if I could disappear…and still, none of can bring grace.

Later that night, drunk, I stared into the bonfire, wondering how it would feel to pitch myself into it, how the people around would react, wondering if that thought even mattered. I tossed an empty beer bottle into the fire, knowing it wouldn’t burn. It was made of stuff more solid than I. Still later that evening, and still drunk, I drove down that same road, looking for the ghost of grace, finding nothing. The stars overhead, far away and sharp like the tips of a hundred hunting knives, like the very knife I had with me, hurt my head. Why was I even carrying the knife? The stars would just eat it too. Breaking my body to hold my bones.