The Map That Leads to You

by J.P. Monninger

I wanted to hear why he had to blow up my world in order to make his better. Men did this sometimes. It wasn’t the first time I had seen something like this.

“Good drinks are always sad.

I could recall coming in from skating, or from sledding, and the world was quiet for a moment, was sincere in a way it could not always be sincere, and as eager as you were to be inside, to be warm and contained, it was difficult to leave the outside world, to say good-bye to all the air and wind and freedom. I always felt a traitor by going inside, as if I turned my back on a dear friend. I felt that now. When I stepped off the boat onto the solid framing of the pier, I felt my childhood beside me.

Afterward, I slept a long time beside the ocean. I had one of those strange sleeps in which the sound of gulls plays in your dreams and you hardly know what is the dream and what is waking life.

“We don’t have to stop falling in love, do we? We can fall deeper.”

Sometimes it’s easier to ruin a thing than to guard it.