launched a thousand ships in my heart, texas (or any)

[Texas]

there was something in the water, now that something's in me

i can't go back, but the reeds are growing out of my fingertips

Texas has always been a shallow man, preferring the company of attractive mares and disappearing at the sight of grey hair. Some part of him considers himself kind for this – young mares can so easily start over, even with carrying the child of a man they’ll never see again. He’d tried to count – decades ago – the children he might have, but once he passed fifty there was no use continuing. Children don’t need a father to thrive; most times they don’t even need a real mother.

In that counting though, he’d hesitated at Lanai. They had children, didn’t they? Surely they had – he could still remember the things he had felt, and surely such strong emotion had been consummated and produced children. But he couldn’t remember them, couldn’t picture their faces, couldn’t even recall that he had been the one to walk away, that it is his fault that there are no children with Lanai’s love of the sea and Texas’ love of…himself.

She calls out to him and he cannot deny her. His feet move forward rather than away, until he is close enough to touch her. He does not. He hangs back, takes a moment to look into her soft eyes and at the sand and coral in her mane. She is old and grey and the most beautiful thing he has ever laid eyes on.

“You came back,” he says, the words much more of a question than a statement. She is here and she is not how he remembers her. She is better, and surely that means she is real?

texas