Cigarette smoke dances back in the window and I can see the haze on the dome light. I'm conjuring ghosts on a forty-hour ride home. They keep asking me what I'm doing with my life, while my cousins go to bed with their wives. I'm feeling like I've fallen behind. The highway won. I'm listening to traffic reports, one on one, coming quietly undone. I was born to run away from anything good?an escape artist's son with sun-drenched pavement in my blood. The first thing that I do when I walk in is plan a way out for when %#@! gets bad and I've been looking for tears in the screen door. I've been waiting for another disaster. I'm terrified like a kid in the sixties, staring at the sky waiting for the bomb to fall. It's all a lie, what they say about stability. It scares me sometimes, the emptiness I see in my eyes. All the kid's names I've ever liked are tied to tragedy and I don't want my children growing up to be anything like me. I've been looking for tears in the screen door. I've been waiting for another disaster but I was kind of hoping you'd stay. I keep a flashlight and a small knife in the corner of my bed stand. I keep a flashlight and the train times, but you wouldn't understand. How could you understand? Jesus Christ. I'm 26. All the people I graduated with all have kids, all have wives, all have people who care if they come home at night. Jesus Christ, did I $#&@ up?