canyon
Sam. Brendan. Michael. Kat. I. We all went to a park today, one of the big parks, the long ones with forests and farms mixed in with housing projects and stagnant pools of gasoline. We drove an hour to get there, the roads were blocked like martial law in the suburbs. I kept my face out of the wind.
We found a tower with others on it. When we climbed it we looked up and said hello to these new strangers. They were from the northwest, we the east. We pointed there and said we were from the other side of town, they nodded and smoked their cigarettes. After a while of staring and joking I ran down to find a stone to drop off of it. Kat followed me and soon we were running into a new field and taking pictures where horses had collapsed.
I ran and climbed a tree house, abandoned and caved in. Sam and Brendan ran the other way looking for me while I found a view. Past broken Yield signs and washing machines was this cliff that dropped off into a rift in the earth filled with dots of puddles, lakes of shit and marker juice that ran into the cracks. I stood there for a second, taking it all in, how the birds weren’t there, how slowly the cars drove along the interstate in the distance, and how the last thing you could see before the sun was a string of condos.
I leaped another fence and found a new place. I sprinted through the underbrush, whatever I touched melted away and I was swimming through the forest. We sat there a while until Sam and Brendan came calling. Kat jumped up and yelled back first. “Sam.” It echoed through the valley we’d discovered for ourselves and I wanted to look for the others who yelled back. I almost crawled down the cliff.
Sam’s hat got caught on the branches.
“The forest wants your hat.”
“Yeah, won’t let ‘em have it.”
“They want to wear it and be one of us but we go and they stay.”
“Yeah.”
He looked away and started singing a song I didn’t recognize.
We drove home, my face in the air this time, hair plastered behind my ears, feeling so confused when we passed a Jared Galleria of Jewelry, torn between what we’ve done and what we’ve done.
