Where All Light Tends to Go

by David Joy

A person who didn’t know any better would have thought them the perfect American family. Live the lie and they’ll believe the lie, but I knew different.

Folks like me were tied to this place, but Maggie held no restraints. She was out of here from the moment she set her eyes on the distance. If I ever did have a dream, it was that she might take me with her. But dreams were silly for folks like me. There always comes a time when you have to wake up.

In a way, I think they knew she was already gone. They knew it just as much as I did. A girl like that couldn’t stay. Not forever, and certainly not for long.

She loved me too much to let me go and I loved her too much to drag her down.

What they didn’t know was that those types of guys were too worried about impressing one another to concentrate on important shit like pussy. Those guys were too busy chugging beers and trying to memorize rap lyrics to pay attention to what girl had that fuck-me look in her eyes.

Toughness never wore out of men born with it.

There was never a moment in my life when I bought into the idea of light at the end of the tunnel. That old adage rests entirely on the direction being traveled.

Blood’s thicker than water, and I was drowning in it. I was sinking down in that blood, and once I hit bottom, no one would find me.

There was a part of me that understood that with that hardness came an inability to ever let anyone worth having get close enough to love.

He was a pussy, and I knew it. Somewhere deep down he knew it too. When he was alone, I reckon it came to him, and he stewed on it awhile. A man can’t hide that type of softness about himself no matter how hard he tries. Sometime or another, it’s going to eat at him.

Being one of the few lawyers around, he’d always done well, and that type of money dazzled the eyes of girls who’d been raised on mayonnaise sandwiches in the holler.

She looked like she might’ve been pretty at some point earlier in life, but instead of riding that natural beauty out gracefully, she’d opted to hitch her wagon to Queen and let doctors pinch and poke and stretch and prod till wasn’t anything left that duct tape could fix.

There was a place where all light tends to go, and I reckon that was heaven.

The place where all that light gathered back and shined was about as close to God as I could imagine.

Knowing only darkness, a man doesn’t have to get his heart broken in search of the light.