I’ve left him sitting in the pickup truck for more than a month now. Longer if you count the first draft written sometime last year. I keep saying that I’m going to look for that piece of paper, but I don’t; mostly because I’m worried that I won’t find it. If that makes any sense, which I’m sure it doesn’t.

I remember quite distinctly the action or lack of action that took place, if not the exact words. This time around, however, I see him in the blue pickup truck, wearing a flannel shirt and worn, faded blue jeans, sometimes he’s smoking a cigarette, sometimes not. But always staring at the dusty porch that surrounds the store. Always trying to burn this scene into his mind because he doesn’t know when he’ll next see it again. Except I don’t know where he’s going. I don’t know why he’s leaving. And maybe that’s why he’s been sitting in that pickup truck for so long. Because I don’t know the answers and, for whatever the reason, I am not allowing him to help me answer them.

I feel as if I need to let him out soon though or he’ll go away all together, without leaving me a single note. All that will be left will be that dusty storefront, and an old man waiting inside, wondering why nobody ever comes in.

[5]