Thomas Wolfe Might Have Been Wrong

You can go home again.

"I've shed selves since then, like a snake sheds skin" she said, her eyes whipping past me. I nod and agree but say only "I allowed it to happen, I made the choice, and live with it even now."

"What?" The question a Rubik's cube.

The answer is out of me before I can close my mouth, it has slipped past, and unfurls like flag. "I have always always loved him."

In the perfect world, I'd have fallen to the ground, my eyes rolling back, the shivering seizure taking the truth of it from me. She'd have been struck deaf by god, if he'd been kind. I should have let out a scream that went on till I coughed blood, I'd have torn my hair and thrown myself on the pyre of the past.

Instead

the miles keep flying by, the forest is not the skeletons of char after a fire, the sky blazes blue instead and I close my eyes and cover them with my hands.

There is a creeping joy in knowing, and now I do know. "I could never tell him no" I whisper. "I have looked for him always, and defined and redefined love by what he had to offer, though it was so much less than love."

She is silent, then a small burst of laughter, like a child.

"Now what?"