Come Away With Me

Come away with me in the night
Come away with me
And I will write you a song

Come away with me on a bus
Come away where they can't tempt us
With their lies

And I want to walk with you
On a cloudy day
In fields where the yellow grass grows knee-high
So won't you try to come?

Come away with me and we'll kiss
On a mountaintop
come away with me
And I'll never stop loving you

and I want to wake up with the rain
Falling on a tin roof
While I'm safe there in your arms
So all I ask is for you
To come away with me in the night
Come away with me

-Norah Jones


I was missing her. It felt a lot like trying to walk away from flesh hooks. Every step I could feel the metal tearing through my skin .. cutting it apart in jagged strips .. and yet unable to stop pulling .. stretching. As if I could pull a little faster .. a little harder ... and they would rip free.

But they do not.

I was lost in the desert. In the suffocating heat. The dry sand taking every ounce of moisture from my body .. from my mind ... leaving only the dry grit of cell against cell behind.

I could hear her voice. The low feminine timber of the words she would string together .. a tapestry that she kept connected by tunes that would lift and fall like a gentle breeze through the grass. If I closed my eyes I could almost pretend she was there .. tempting me to ... come away with her.

I wanted to pretend that it was real. Was it wrong to just .. pretend ... that I could take her hand in mine. Watching the little fingers disappear within brutal grasp of my own .. as I tried so hard to be gentle with her.

If it was wrong .. than I am wrong. I rested my head and let the memories surround me .. I stopped pulling against the hooks and just relaxed into them ... I even pushed them deeper .. until I could feel her touch. It swelled in my chest until I thought I would drown in it. I was so tired. My head was so hot .. and she touched me like a cool spring rain .. and I let it fall over me.

When I opened my eyes I saw her there .. it was her eyes ... her smile. And I felt the rush of all the things I had been wanting to say to her .. tell her ... swell up in me. But something was not right .. words began to write themselves upon her flesh ... her skin turned black with them. Little letters making little words making little sentences that stretched all over her body. No .. not this ... not again .... not her. Anything but this. I felt the desperation .. the inevitability of it all ... but I still tried to save her. I reached for her .. but the rain was still falling and her flesh tore and dissolved within my fingers. I cursed myself for my rough touch ... still trying to gather her to me ... but she ran through my fingers.

And then ... I saw that everywhere I had touched her .. the letter were starting to form on my own skin ... writing themselves faster than I could read them ... trailing up my arms from my hands.

And it was still raining.

I felt a fear I had never felt in these dreams before .. I realized I was turning to paper myself. Me .. not just her. Me .. my frantic salvation attempts turned to the very real issue of trying to save myself. But it was just as useless .. the end just as inevitable. My skin slowly sluffing off in wet sheets of liquidized parchment.

Come away with me.

But I could not. I could not stop trying to live .. to survive ... trying to gather myself even as I no longer had any hands to do it with. I had to go towards the heat and walk away from the coolness of the rain. I had to give up the soothing sounds of her voice .. her touch ... and feel the hooks again ... the horror of the suffocating desert.

I woke .. in my wagon ... my body on fire in a way I have felt very few times in my life. I tried to crawl but I had no strength left. Somewhere in the parched recesses of my brain I realized that it was my shoulder. The laconic way I had been feeling was not just a healthy tiredness from the journey. I fumbled around and found the small blade I kept in my boot .. and still not quite sure if I was still in my dreams or awake I drove the thing into my shoulder. And my world faded to black.

When I woke .. it was not the pain in my shoulder .. it was not the fact that my body was covered in sweat. It was not the first inkling that the fever had finally broke ... it was not the sickness that rose in me.. it was my own grief that overwhelmed me.

I pressed my forehead into the bare planks of the flooring of my wagon and I wept for myself .. choked on my own sorrow ... my own aloneness that at that moment seemed too much to bear ... too much to feel. I clenched my fists and shoved my knuckles against the grain of the wood and let my entire body shake with the silent sobbing that could not even reach my voice .. it was so deep within that it simply rocked my core and caved my stomach in like I was hollow inside

... perhaps I am.