Then, well, I lost touch. And this is what happened.
Although she was gone, I prayed for Mary three times a day, once with every meal, every day that I was there the whole time I was away. You should total it up. I pray for her still, must have been the other day. I prayed for her from the heart. I used to howl and thrash and pray to God, over and over, again and again, year after year, in deserts so dry and valleys so low, to please, please, God, somehow please, please help me remember that address. I tried everything. My thoughts were stolen, my mind was a stained glass prism, shattered. She was my only friend that wasn't mixed up with such a rough crowd as I was in. My mind was full of tangled knots, and the closer I got, the further away it actually was. It was completely hopeless. I couldn't find it for anything, and I couldn't find anyone who could tell me where she was at, because I guess, as you know, she was always traveling. I guess this was during the cold war.
You wouldn't believe how I prayed and cried. If anyone knows how I missed her, it was God.
Because sure as the sun rises, one day she was back! I went to see an old country traveler about a dispute, and the man was able to look her up on fidonet and find her through her publisher. It was a real life miracle, a prayer answered against odds so completely insane that it was virtually impossible. I had never seen anything like it, and I’m used to the unusual. To say the least. I must have been the happiest man in the whole world. I'm sure I was. I must have nearly died from smiling. I'd never seen nothing like it, not to this day. I would read her missives when I was alone, and displaced, even when eventually everyone I had loved had turned their back on me and betrayed me, they were of no small comfort. They were one of my most valuable possessions.
But I never could tell, to be honest, what happened to me and Mary while I was away. I'd like to know some day, although it's not the details sometimes, but the big picture. It was never the same, not after we had been apart. Something was amiss. It didn’t feel right. It seems like she had her feelings hurt. Was it the distance? Did some one break her heart? I'll never know, but it never was the same after that. Never has been. I wish I knew. I hope she'll be ok. I trust that there’s a high purpose for every for all life, and that there is a right place for us all in the grand design.
I thought I had lost her for good, perhaps rightfully, but I guess I see her on facebook every now and then to talk about the weather underground.
I still think about her now and then. That was one cool motherfucker no matter what nobody says.