9

A man, a plan. Pakistan at dark. The town, not the country. Pakistan, Kansas. Perhaps it doesn't exist. Perhaps it does if you dream of it often enough. It probably would, as towns with significant names of other significant places, be a place that was insignificant. He would be from Pakistan, Kansas. He would have literary aspirations, business aspirations, musical aspirations, life aspirations. But his aspirations would lead him nowhere. He would be everything you believed you needed, the one who would wake you up in the middle of the night, snoring into your ear, the one who clipped his toenails and left them to disintegrate on the kitchen floor where they would mix with the dust and not be noticed. He would be the one who would laugh obnoxiously when people hurt themselves. He would be the one you needed. He would be the one to make you see how you really were, look at yourself the way you should be seen. And he would be horrible. And you would say to yourself how you deserve better. But you don't, and you never will. Because Pakistan, Kansas doesn't exist. And you will never find him, the one you believed you needed, the one you needed. Maybe you will find the one you want and he will be just as good as the one you needed, but you only think that. And he will be from Lebanon, Michigan.