Sometimes I think that if I weren’t so rooted in the place I call home, I’d pack everything up, take out an obscene loan, and disappear into the mountains. I was not born in a place where you can easily sever ties, not some podunk town in Wisconsin or a sleepy little burg in Ohio. I hail from the Deep South, and when you’re born here, your DNA knows it. But after you and I called it quits, I somehow managed to forget that after the panic attacks at Walmart, the endless nights sitting in the dark in my new and alien apartment, I still had to go out into this city I had called home for more than 30 years and have to see all the ghostly imprints of you and I. We walked together for a decade. There’s not a lot of ground we have not touched. The city glows with our footsteps.
On Saturdays, we’d wake up early, get breakfast, and run the town,…