# 3.

I once ran away from here.

It would flow to narrate that I fled into the darkness after a fusillade of bitter words on automatic fire, silver-tipped with truth for effect. After the parachuting of loaded syllables upon deaf ears, or perhaps, after the slamming of doors that rattled the lopsided taper upon the mantle, clumsily crafted by Evan's own knobbly hands.

However, such a flow would soon be stilted by subtle inconsistencies, and laced with a considerable undercurrent of dishonesty.

When I faded into the tall grass surrounding our sprawling property, the homestead golden in the half-light, it was because I was intent on preserving things exactly as they had been that day. I was convinced that if I left things on a high note, the soprano would just have to hold true until I came back.

The idea came free with a stunning pair of rose-coloured glasses.

It was not a noteworthy day, or at least, not then, anyway. Nothing very particular had interrupted the relay of each hour, one to the next, and the next to another, marking the longevity of those of us who have a fondness for existing. Breakfast was quiet, midday even moreso. I scrubbed the same front landing, with the same pine detergent, my calloused hands unchanged.

But in the afternoon, Evan had crossed our shabby green threshold with a smile on his face that, for once, extended to his eyes. Better yet, the adorable dimples either side of his stubbled cheeks had lasted the evening through - a definite anomaly. I drank in the sight of his good cheer greedily, noting with ill-concealed glee that for the first time in an age, he had paint on his hands.

This made me happy. It was a day of contentedness...we see so few of them here.

With this thought in mind, I stole away into the fields, the lush foliage consuming quickly the pock-marked earth left behind by so many years of thirst.

I took nothing with me. My worldly possessions, though few in number, belonged to the life I was running away from. The satisfaction I beheld them with was picturesque only within the four walls that housed me so generously in the years following my birth.

I only lasted the one night.

I rested with my back to the grass, staring up at a blanket of nothingness that I wanted to curl beneath and run from at the same time. The infinity of silver-specked sky frightened me. I think it was the freedom.

Sleep evaded me. I am in the habit of running my hands along the oaken headboard of my gnarled wooden bed. Without the feel on the knots beneath my fingertips, so comfortably familiar; without enacting the memory of your hand upon mine, guiding it over the carving in the lathed post as we dozed cheek to cheek in the twilight, I felt desperately lost in the world.

It was then that I realised I could never leave my recollections to deliquesce within the confines of that house.

Not without seeing you again.