The Sound of Water
Ten years ago I drove down Highway 43 at dusk, watching the sun melt into a haze of orange over Deep Lake, and with one particular song that seemed to evaporate into the heavy air on repeat, I pulled my car into his parent's driveway. He was home from California, and in that moment, shooting baskets with his brother and two friends under the garage light and an assemblage of summer-drunk bugs. He wore a yellow shirt, thin and wide on his shoulders. When his gaze met mine through the windshield glass--that smile, that shirt, that sun, those bugs, the rest of our lives: there they were. What I remember of that summer was like that look: heady. Anyone who has not just walked toward love but fallen off the dock into the black midnight waters of it will know what I mean. You do not know you can talk that long, grin that big, stare that uninterruptedly, kiss that hard, laugh that loud, dream that vividly, hope that unapologetically until suddenly you are doing all of those things, unti...
