Good as Gone

by Amy Gentry

The feeling of leaving: a perfect feeling, better than any safety in the world.

She was done playing a rag doll, whether she got tucked in at night or thrown against the wall.

I have spent my own life looking to my left and right and finding only the well-worn tracks of my own thoughts and behavior hemming me in.

But once something like that happens to you, there is no before anymore. It takes the before away. And if there’s no before, then there’s no order I can tell it in that makes any sense, and no reason to choose one particular place over any other.