(Untold Pretties)

It started raining just as I dropped her off at her car
The sun was on the cusp of rising and
It was still cool from the late winter
But the days were now warming into springtime
She walked halfway to her car then turned
Around and looked at me and smiled
Then ran back to my window as I rolled it down for
Her to stick her head in and kiss me one more time
Then run back in the rain to her car, get in and drive off

I sat there for a time with the rain
Starting to drizzle into my open window
Sitting in the parking lot of the Southern Touch, thinking

As far as I'm concerned it was the last time I ever saw her

On the drive out to the funeral to bury my granddaddy it began to snow
Growing up in North Alabama it seldom snowed
Sometimes a couple of years would go by
Sometimes it might snow twice in a season
But it was still a novelty
The sky was as gray as an open cord and
As plaintive as fog in black and white
My granddaddy always liked snow and somehow I did too

The drive was out the old Savannah
Highway which was still two lane then
We wound around Dead Man's Curve where that lady from the Sunbeam
Bread wrapper was killed in a head-on back when I was little

Out past our family's farm to the little Methodist church
Where once upon a time my grandmother had gone to Sunday school

The same humble structure that witnessed their marriage of 42 years
And where just a few years ago I had gone to youth group
And Methodist Youth Foundation campouts and hayrides and lock-ins

Maybe I thought about that sad snowy morning
And burying my granddaddy those few years later
As I drove home in the rain

Home to my fiancee's bed
Just a few weeks shy of getting married
With the taste of an old high school
Sweetheart lingering on my lips and fingers
And the rain started pouring down

Out of the sky like a wonderful wrath from God
A God who might spite me even as I turned
From His grasp and shunned His embrace
I was plotting an escape that I was still a
Few years away from having the guts to pull off

Years later that realization became a personal
Hell that followed me around for a while
And then didn't anymore
You can only carry hell around so long before it gets to be a drag