My Eyes Are Dry

Today I am dehydrated.

My contacts make sticky noises when I blink. I feel lethargic. I cannot clear my throat. I am nothing more than chapped lips and fingertips cracking from the cold wind. I am that and nothing more.

The hard thing about making a decision is the questions after: "Was that the best thing to do?" "Was that correct?" "What if I had done more?" "Is it too late to turn back?"

But then I think of the things she said: "what could never be again." Or to explain our entire relationship: "I didn't think."

There is no more water within me, and so I think back to downpour days in Searcy and watching the sheets of rain run over my windshield. I think of sitting there in my car and wondering when it would take me out of that drainage-challenged town. Now I look up at planes carving paths across sky and I wonder when I will return to the States, and what I will return to.

There, what could be?