Sitting behind the wheel, sweating in the hot breeze blowing in through the open driver's side window, Dear John considers his attachment to life a cruel trick fate or god has played on him. The field in which he is parked drops steeply away just in front of the car to become a brush-covered hillside cascading rough-hewn down the lakeshore below. The surface of the muddy water is choppy today, disturbed by the fitful cooking winds. A song he doesn't know, although he has certainly heard it ten thousand times in the background of his life, plays almost inaudibly on the car radio. He doesn't really want music, but he can't seem to escape a torturous silence no matter where he goes. The beer is warm and his last cigarette is all filter and ashes, burning out in his fingers. The note she wrote sits beside him on the seat where she used to sit. He knows he should read it, but he just leaves it there, folded and still. A dragonfly lights on the car antenna outside as Dear John wonders if a storm might be building. "A storm would be nice," he says aloud to no one, crushing the remains of the cigarette in the ashtray. The dragonfly also flies away.
There is also a wind that blows in cool and soft with promise of relief. Close your eyes and let the storm blow you away. Let the water wash you clean. Let the wind take you home.
Hello, friends. How are you today?
Later. Love.
