I Watched Half of a Movie Starring a Guy Who Lost to my Dad in Tennis

He cracked his windows and lit a cigarette. It was cold outside, but not cold enough to mind. It was colder elsewhere. His mind raced, his car sputtered. He pulled over to think it over. He thought of better days. Different days. He turned a twelver box inside out, and put a pencil to that parchment. The parchment of the people.

"It's hard to say, but maybe that's when Paradise was lost. Maybe it didn't need to be found. Or couldn't be found.

Maybe it shouldn't be found.

Maybe it's an idea, or maybe a time. A stop at Willoughby, a chance to unwind.

Paradise. The perfect idea for an imperfect mind. A goal unattainable, a life unsustainable."


He read that back to himself, reassuringly. He didn't really know what it meant. Didn't really care. He liked to write, and that's what came out. He had a girl on his mind, and he didn't mind. She had been in his thoughts lately, after a long hiatus. She was never one to stay. Maybe that's what scared him. What enticed him.

He took a look down at his cigarette. Biting at the filter, he tossed it aside. Outside. He imagined it as a metaphor for the fleetingness of life, of relationships. He fancied himself clever. He kept that to himself.

He decided it was time to move on, just as she had done so many times before. He got back on the highway, that barren stretch of 51. It was usually that way. Just a few cars with a slight hug of every turn, the kudzu monsters with a blight hug of every fern.

He approached Memphis while she dreamt of it. Not knowing what to think when she realized that dream. But She was coming. Like the great quake on the New Madrid Fault, She was coming. No one knew when, but he had an idea. A feeling in his gut, an end to his rut.

She was a free spirit in the purest sense. In a free world where nothing's free. He realized that but she didn't. She would. Would she? She might, and He wanted to show her. He was fine with killing one dream if he could reawaken another. He feared the words would escape him when they mattered most. He picked up that parchment and listened to his ghost.

"It's hard to say, but maybe that's when Paradise was lost. Maybe it didn't need to be found. Or couldn't be found.

Maybe it shouldn't be found.

Maybe it's an idea, or maybe a time. A stop at Willoughby, a chance to unwind.

Paradise. The perfect idea for an imperfect mind. A goal unattainable, a life unsustainable."