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>i can't help but think back. cant help it. dont want to. but yet i do. happy now. but yet i do.

and i cant believe that it was 5 years ago. my brain hurts a lot. but i cant believe 7 years ago was 7 years ago either. time moves fast in the big city.

>theres a life you lead and a life you dont and its true that we make our own present daily. but there are those days (not like the days like this you're momma said momma said) or weeks or months or years or seconds that shape more of time than you ever could have imagined.

>i cant help it. i wanna go back sometimes and make the braver decision. the harder decision.

>the enormity of it all just rips you a-fucking-part somedays.

>today turns into tomorrow turns into something good turns into 2005.

>it all comes flooding back.

places i was once

a hotel on the highway. outside of denver co. kind of mission-style inside with warm beige stucco walls and some fountains and everything.

i was there with other people and i can't remember who they were.

we didn't stay long and i can't remember why we were there.

it was east of denver on the highway which was kind of a wasteland of storage rentals and shipping container yards and metal shops. big billboards advertising local radio and car dealerships. electrical wires everywhere and the faint outline of the mountains that lay just a few miles away but remained cloaked in the thick haze of denver industry.

we sat in a bar area with little tables reached through labyrinthine halls, past overgrown potted plants. no servers to be found. we just sat there for a while and moved on.

i remember the whole thing being odd. a weird (nice) hotel in a desolate industrial zone. not even near the airport to justify itself.

it was probably that summer of 91. i lived in denver for a time then.

i thought of all the times as i kid i would sit in the back of the family car on a trip to the mountains. we made a game out of when we could first see the mountains. every year we had to be close and closer to denver before we spotted them. the haze and smog got thick and thicker every year.

i would sit in the back, staring out at the vast industrial park that sat east of denver along 76. past barr lake. staring out at it all, thinking of who lived in this mess, who worked here, why stop if not for gas?

why stop indeed.

maybe it was because we were in a place like where i'm from. not where i'm from but like it. country roads. day bleeding into night. highway gas stations. small towns. being looked at. taking pictures in a field. the corn is that high, yes.

and with the sun roof open. and the ac on. and good music playing a little too loud. it all feels like a jeff buckley song. or that volkswagen commercial. actually that's what it feels like. and you're smitten. by the headlights bouncing off the trees and the macadam. by the smell of a humid country night. by all of it.

stars in the sky. eyes wide open. heart alla patter.

like you were before.

and you remember that don't you? through all the countless nights and missing parts and other forgotten stuff. you remember those certain days and places and smells and then things feel like that again. and it makes sense. how it all comes flooding back.

with the next thing.

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twenty years ago i was just about to start my last semester in high school.

it was the dirty end of winter.

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