Wells, Nevada

I fell asleep last night with a little girl resting in my arms.
She's a grown woman, but she's a little girl.

She may not have known she was in them, but in my mind's eye, I remembered what it was like, what it felt like to hold my own daughter across my lap in a rocking chair till she fell asleep and I just put us together in one, right there in Wells, Nevada.

She was right beside me
She was almost a thousand miles away and she was right beside me









I spent the night in Wells, Nevada, while falling asleep for snatched moments here on the Island.
I could smell the floors and felt the night around me, the silence getting bigger as it got later.
Knew what it looked like through the living room window into the dark, but I've never been there. Curled up beside her under the table she'd pulled her blanket and laptop beneath while we both tried to believe in the illusion of safety inside her makeshift fort.
Knew a stranger was breathing deeply in the other room, but didn't know if they were awake or not. The big man who rescued her from the side of the road.
Prayed short anxious one word prayers; Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
Does she know I actually did keep the laptop open and on all night, my hand reaching out of its own volition to shift it back to the feed of her sleeping every time the screen went dark.

And I miss Wells, Nevada, because I was there, seriously, but I was so glad we got the fuck out.

I miss being there with that little girl, with that teenager, with that grown woman.

I miss hearing all of her words; spoken with that rich Kentucky-bred treacle.  Each and every one of them.  Some showed me a keyhole, some a window, some opened up a door real wide.

I like this girl.  I understand this girl.  I want to raise this girl all over again and take her to school, drop her off on the first day of school with a perfectly packed lunch bag full of love and sandwiches. 

I want to put a band-aid on her knees when she falls and gets them skinned, and I want to hear about her first love, and teach her how to drive a car so that when she grows up and gets a truck and drives across the country and gets stranded in Wells, Nevada, she remembers us laughing hysterically when she got it all wrong the first time.

I'd like to do it all in reverse until she gets what she needs, what she deserved to have.

I told her, "It's good to work out whether you want someone for something you need that you never got, or someone you need for something you never even knew you wanted", but the truth is she needed a good mother for pity's sake, a strong father so she can rest easy in who she is.

Wells, Nevada... never thought I'd be there, but I'll always be glad I was. Can't shake the feeling of the desert out of my heart right now and I don't think I'll try right away.