Anywhere But Near

{a slice of fiction}

She sat across the table from him lost in thought. Her head was slightly tilted as she played with the shape of her wrist and spoke, "There's something about me that I can't figure out. I always want to be somewhere else. It's a need, a craving."

He looked at her as he always did, with love and patience and he asked, "Why?"

"I don't know," she said, "Maybe it's because home was always a relative term or maybe it's how God made me. I want that place to come back to but if I don't leave frequently I feel like I'll die."

She crawled inside her heart and dug around shuffling the dusty travel itineraries stuck in scrapbooks with receipts from ristorante's she ate at alone and photos she took with people that were just a train stop on her journey. They felt good as she pulled up each one: Australia's Kangaroo Island and the smell of Eucalyptus lapsed into the taste of fresh yogurt in New Zealand and the sound of a good rugby match. The shine and bump of cobblestone under her feet tingled her memory of Norway and the taste of waffles & fresh water as she drifted in a fjord on her way to London's churches and china stores. Italy came and stayed awhile as she inhaled a cigarette, drank red wine, & bought her daily mele on the way to school. The taste she swore she'd never know sat on her tongue as the memories of Greece came to play and took her all the way to Peru where dirt stuck in her fingernails & laughs echo through Macchu Pichu. Her heart was pounding and she realized, she was addicted to the rush and she began to cry.

"I just can't breathe here. The world is out there waiting to teach me more about who I am. It is wanting me to remember how strong I am, how beautiful life really is and what it's all about."

Her whispers came in echoes as he reached a hand out to hers and spoke, "I'm listening."

"Whenever I leave a place in life, I can't go back. It's as if I look back and all I can see is how ugly I was, how much better I could have been. When I'm on an adventure, it's not like that. What I see is how strong I am, how blessed I am. That's what traveling gives me, a place I want to go back to because I see the good about me. I tackle fear, I do the impossible, and I succeed. That doesn't happen for me anywhere else but out there. I need to go out there. I need to go with you," she begged with a quietly explosive passion.

And as only he could, he said, "I love you," and it opened to door to the abyss of forever.