Finding

He woke alone in the small room they shared in the town they stopped at. After leaving the city neither of them had any plans on where to go or what to do and had wandered around several states looking for a place.

This little town was quiet. After ten at night you didn't see anyone about. He didn't recall seeing a bar in town.

He rubbed his neck in an absent minded fashion, the couch was not meant to be slept on for this amount of time. Still after all the weeks they had been traveling together, they hadn't slept together. Some things didn't change. Some things did change as he wasn't proud of it this time around. He didn't understand it - they had so much in common, their lives had twisted in mirror images of each other.

After sitting back down at the tiny table, he tried to recall her leaving. He wasn't a heavy sleeper and couldn't recall her stepping out.

No whispered words or breeze from the closing door three feet away from where he had lain.

She obviously had meant to leave without waking him.

He refused to be surprised. Surprise meant that something was wrong with them and he refused to see that.

Still, she was gone and no note.

He waited there for three days, walking around the city in the hopes he might see her. Every time he saw someone who looked like her his breath would catch until he saw it wasn't her. Like a deflated balloon he returned to the motel room.

He packed his bag once more the following morning, resolved to try and forget the past and her. The steering wheel felt cold against his forehead as he got ready to leave. Such a sorry place, he thought to himself. Everything is empty here and hopeless. You could really see it in the eyes of the people on the street. They did't know why they stayed here and couldn't tell why anyone would want to stay in such a dark place. They had reasons though, some pretty thin, but there were some. Perhaps family or lack of money played a role. Most likely though was that they were doing what someone else though they should do.

Still, one place is like another and if you can get away from streets and houses you can forget everything attached to them.

There had to be a place that he could be in and wouldn't make his skin crawl.

On the way out of the hotel parking lot he saw Sandy. She looked worn and tired. Her eyes matched the others in town in their perfect emptiness.

"Where are you going?"

He laughed at that, again like at her apartment in the city he thought she was trying to say something beyond what was here and now. She was simply stating obvious words. No concern for him or them for that matter, just a vague statement.

"The room is paid for until the end of the week."

With that, he drove away in what he hoped was a random direction.

As he passed the sign announcing the tiny town he wondered how many people had tried to recreate the past, and failed miserably. It's an old rule about going home again.

That place is not only destroyed by our memories but the ruins of it are hidden in the changes that take over all of us. The only possible place for anyone is in the future with a new place and people.