Summer. Hazy days. Long nights. The cry of the cicadas. And so many people I know living trapped lives. One foot in the bear claw.

The young father, with two new babies, working and raising his children and sleeping and that’s all. No beer. No parties. No nights out. He thought he’d be a lot happier, he confides, without any irony.

The charming, lovely girl, stuck on her own fatness. I’m fat, she declares. I will never be beautiful. I will never be happy. I will never be successful. Nobody will ever see me. She’s afraid to go out for fear of being invisible. Meanwhile, she makes herself invisible hiding. She knows she does it to herself. That doesn’t matter.

The new father’s wife, suffering some long-hidden stress, recently reveals her profound melancholy. Meanwhile, the husband struggles to hold his young family together.

The overwrought lovers, forgetting how to love, continue if only out of boredom. Meanwhile, the cry of the cicadas

I know it’s not possible, I know it’s an illusion, I know it’s not adult and not responsible. But let’s you and me get out of here. Let’s shake it off, let’s slough it off, let’s hightail it out of town.

A rented car. A road trip. Murphy. Motels in the mountains. Rhubarb pie across the country. Different trees than we’ve got here. The smell of night somewhere else, anywhere else. Stars we don’t see in the city. Beside a motel, a ranch, running horses. We’ll be so alive and living, just like a cigarette commercial.

We stop by the roadside, it doesn’t matter where we are, and take Murphy for a run in new fields, new parks. Instead of squirrels, she can stalk prairie dogs, gophers, chipmunks.

Besides, what have we got to hold onto right now? A job where you’re not appreciated? Data entry?

Yeah, I know. I couldn’t convince you the first time. But you can’t blame a guy for trying. Or fantasizing about trying.

Meanwhile, the cry of the cicadas and the haze of summer and I can’t even find the barest shred of myself anymore.

SS