Good as Gone

by Amy Gentry

Whither is fled the visionary gleam? / Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Anywhere must seem hip when you’re getting your hair dyed to piss off your mom.

I have a sudden picture of Carol Morse at home with her husband, listening to Fleetwood Mac in the Jacuzzi she surely has on the back deck of the house she purchased by taking strangers’ money for reassurances that their lives are okay, that everything will work out.

It’s so easy to forget how terrible the world is. Tragedy reminds us. It is purifying in that way. But when it starts to fade, you have to return to the source, over and over.

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

He’d cry and cry and beg for forgiveness, but somehow, it would still be her fault.