Jason

I don't sleep on the ground between sandstone walls.

I don't let the night close over me like water.

We all drifted apart, the five of us.

Not dramatically.

Just the slow, natural unraveling of friendships when life pulls in different directions.

I still talk to Erin occasionally.

We never talk about Utah directly, but sometimes she'll say something like, ''Do you ever feel like someone's listening when you're alone?''

sometimes i think about that notebook at the trailhead the double entry our names written twice on the same date in slightly different hands i think about the way the old man at the gas station had looked at us like he was adding up numbers and not liking the sum

I think about that woman in the gear shop.

The way she said, sometimes it keeps what it likes.

Most nights are fine.

I go to work.

I come home.

I cook dinner.

I watch dumb shows until too late.

I fall asleep.

Life's mundanity has its own weight, its own gravity that keeps most of the weird at bay.

But every so often, once every few months, sometimes twice in a week, I'll be getting ready for bed, brushing my teeth with the bathroom door half open, and I'll hear it.

My name, said just the way I say it, the exact same breathing pattern, the same little hitch in the middle I didn't know I had until I heard it from somewhere else.

Jason, it says softly, from the hallway, or the stairwell outside, or the thin space between my bedroom window and the dark.