Satellites

There are places where you only have fun with certain people. That's gravity.

Consistency. Even the uneven kind (what kind of a pattern is 76 years?), it still has the ebb and flow, the push and pull of rhythm. You might not get the math, but you understand enough to trust the process.

Sometimes I'll dream those people. The men and women I only see a few times a year, or the ones I only see every few years. I'll dream that I'm home (which always means Ohio), that I'm in the sunken family room (the fact that there's one-step down into that room from the dining room was always a big deal to me), that Adrian is there with me. He's on the couch, I'm in a chair, the window is open and we can hear the frogs and crickets and toads of the woods behind my house. We didn't spend much time in those woods (those particular woods), but they form the perimeter of our friendship anyway. When I dream of him, I feel like I've seen him. When I dream of him, I dream that he's tired.

I feel the magnets of the midwest. I saw a news headline (unclicked) that asked, Why do meteors explode in midair? I wonder if I'm hurtling back toward the home country, assured of a soft landing in a grassy field, but destined to explode in midair.

I said to someone this weekend, I'd like to get back to the midwest someday.

They said to me, So you consider Ohio the midwest?