Things I'm Seeing Without You

The morning after I dropped out of high school, I woke up before dawn in my father’s empty house thinking about the slow death of the universe. It smelt like Old Spice and middle-aged sadness in the guest room, and this was probably at least part of the reason for my thoughts of total cosmic annihilation. The other part I blame on physics. The class I mean. Not the branch of science. It was one of the last subjects I tried to study before I made the decision to liberate myself from Quaker school, driving five hours through Iowa farm country to make my daring escape.
I did the drive without stopping, listening to religious radio fade in and out of classic rock, which sounded something like this: ‘Our God is an awesome Godddddd and . . .
Ooooh that smell.