Twenty-two hours and four beers later, I'm in New Mexico, the land of sweetly-lit skies. I came here to find myself, to rediscover what I'd forgotten, to figure out what I am without you, and so far the only adjective I've come up with is empty. Somewhere along the way in-between our melodically linked names and joined-at-the-hip days, I lost the definition of me without you.
Soon after we split, I watched a movie that took place in New Mexico. I'd never seen any skies more beautiful, and I dreamt of those sunsets and cloud formations for weeks on end. I thought the desert was someplace you could sink into and slip out of whole. But now that I'm here, I've yet to come together. No matter how hard I pull, I'm still unravelling.
I've been living in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere with only a couch, a bicycle, some clothes, and several cooking utensils to my name. It's more than 50 miles to the nearest grocery store, and the man in the trailer next to me takes me there every other Tuesday. But he and his truck disappeared a week ago, and I've been subsisting on a diet of beer and bread since then. It's been a long time coming, but I've started to miss you less and less. Nowadays, when I lay on the ground, I can almost imagine myself disappearing into the earth.
The man in the trailer next to me has been gone long enough so that three Tuesdays have passed. I've almost completely stopped eating, and it makes me feel like I'm perputally floating. I feel so light that I find myself slipping into the desert so easily. I tell myself that this is what freedom feels like, that life without you slides by so easily there's barely have any time to remember the past. But I've gotten so good at lying that I've stopped believing myself. I've gotten so good at dying that I don't remember how to bring myself back to life.