Page 153 of Wayfarers

“Just leave me alone, Knox!”

“And go—”

“Go do all the things you’ve been threatening to do! Go live your authentic little existence, go be My Side of the Whatever and, like, skin a deer! Go cross Alaska with a hatchet! Go be a saint and let me just stay here and be this terrible person alone if the way I’m treating you hurts you so much.” Saying it feels like ripping a bandage off, that physical.

He’s fumbling for the door handle.

“’Munk,” I say, and I hate the way it sounds. “They called you ’Munk.” But he’s already walking away.

Knox Fun While It Lasted

I leave Sylvie the way

the wind wrests an important document

from your grasp and lofts it away—

powerless against some great force,

stunned and stumbling through the tailgaters

in the parking lot like a drunkard

(I wasn’t the only one) but overserved

with cold loneliness and regret instead of

cold Coronas; cursing my luck

that the same cosmic machinery that would bring

the moon and sun into perfect alignment

tomorrow at the right time brought my past

and present into perfect

alignment at exactly the wrong time.

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted

is the thing you try to tell yourself

but the while it lasted weighs

far heavier than the was fun

part and so it’s really not

a comfort so much as it is

a reminder that your while it lasted

might never be very long.

Sylvie Go Away

And then I’m driving the world’s slowest getaway car