Don't Take Your Love To Town

"The definition of sanity is to be able to work and love."

They were driving to a diner on Route 66.

Like the country that wasn't their own, their closeness was founded on ambition, dreams and finding home when home had been lost.

They loved each other but also the future. The hopeful, beautiful future. United in believing in it's possibilities, haunted by pieces of the past, they became something bigger than just the two of them.

They passed through a ghost town on the way home, needing to stop for gas. He turned up a road, once called Main Street, that acted like coffin's wood, boxing in a once breathing place.

"I wonder what happened."

"Look at the train tracks there. This must have been a train town."

"I guess the train doesn't matter anymore."

There was dust everywhere. Old cars that had rusted into the ground. She admired them. It was hard times but they were still blue, still proud. Foundations of houses stood without walls, brick exposed, grass and gravel for floors.

Windows without glass were boarded shut with plywood. "Keep Out" was scrawled across the yellow grain. "No Trespassing" stood in the middle of a vast space with no border.

What were they protecting? Can you still trespass on something abandoned?

Maybe they wanted to keep the ghosts safe. Maybe when something ends, that will never begin again, the ghosts matter. You want to protect them. Even if you couldn't keep your home or your heart safe, even if you ruined everything and left it for the wind, you protect the ghosts. You want the memories to be respected. You want to pay reverence to what could have been, to what was.

...

They sat in the diner. A group of four sat near them wearing leather. They were old and loud with complexions like sand paper. She wondered if the lines in their faces had been carved with a knife.

"Don't bikers have the most amazing faces?"

"Yeah. You can see the road on them."

Later that day, looking in the mirror, she thought she was beginning to see the road on them, too.

America was founded on principles of freedom, it just got lost along the way.

You could say the same of most great love.