I'm not leaving alone

Sometimes I'm just a tangle in this trampled wheat, I circle like a losing dog.

Most nights, I find myself 60 feet from a cinder block garage. It takes some doing to get there. First, I need to be asleep. No easy task. If it comes, it’ll come late, later than I’d like. 

Once I’m mercifully under sleep’s spell, I’m 13 years old again, holding a baseball and glove. I’m standing on the line I drew on the pavement many years ago. I know this garage. There are 60 feet, 6 inches between me and those cinder blocks. The same distance from home plate to a major league pitcher’s mound. I made sure to check three times with Dad’s tape measure.

The tears are already streaming. No surprise—further confirmation I’m in the backyard of my childhood home, staring at the faded box I drew with chalk on the side of that miserable structure. 

I spent countless hours here in real life. I know why I’m back in a dream; might as well get on with it. I throw the baseball as hard as I can, aiming for the box, wanting the ball to come back at me as fast as possible. Over and over, tears be damned. Throw until they go away, throw until I’m too tired to think.

With a sore right arm, I wake up in a sweat thinking about that kid. This is who he is now? All I can do is rub my eyes and swallow the darkness until it consumes my next sleep. Reality’s weight sits, like a cinder block garage.