outside

Sara / 19 / Bennington College

[emrsn-]

Walk Ten

I am a nettle. I am small and insignificant. I am alive.

Across the field, a siren—an echo of birds rolls wide just beyond the wall.

I am alive.

I am alive.

I am alive.

 And I am surrounded by brick—stone and mortar that crumbles into a red desert at the base. Painted mural repainted by winter and vine, repainted by the decay, by the collapse and the beating sun—beating heart, heavy breath against the cold; an illusion of smoke slips from between the lips. And my fingers are pressed between the cracks of a tree, between the vertebra of some sick ghost white and peeling that slivers it’s body up the wall—I am forced to remind myself that I am not this tree. That this is not my spine, though my own is bent too into an ‘s’ with one too many curves.

            I want to swallow the sound—hold the noise in my belly full. I want to imitate the birds and the soft whistle of dying grasses, open my mouth and breath out the path and the walk and the grind of the gravel beneath my feet. Feet that tangle themselves relentlessly in the tufts of toddler grasses that mess like human knots. 

            I wonder how long this life will last—earth separated into fractions by the colored grasses: white, green, brown; a perfect third. The cat-tails grow long and grey.

            And someday I will dream of this place, when my own skin has grown grey with winter. Dream of lands burnt brown and crisp, of the leaves that catch in the dipping bowls of trodden grasses—between the growth and the decay.

            Witling through the rows of trees into some deep shadowed grave of twig and leaf, I will never know how to write a walk—to make sense of the shift of seasons, the breeze and the life and the—the unexplainable open-wide. But I will try, and fail incredibly. And eventually I myself will become earth, and maybe then I will understand.   

[emrsn-]

Walk Nine: Any Walk

She lay there wheezing softly, embalmed by my bed sheets. We are going to die, she said. Tell me how I am to do that. Tell me—

A shadow stretches long from my window, dragged slowly across the room by some waking dawn. And I’m alive, but I lay still—feel the light envelop the room, swathed by some brooding creature rusted and yellow. And a shade crosses my lips as if to taste them, lips that could kiss—but only for a moment before she too is pushed along by the early bright; embarrassed by first blush. And no matter how still or how long I lay, the dream is done—driven out with the shadows. She is only a memory.

            Cowled in my clothes, it is raining. My shirt clings tight collaring my breast—as I inhale I feel the fabric pull taught against my expanding lungs; lately it has become harder and harder to breath.

The land here is dead—the bones of breathless creatures sprawled in the washes of rain, scattered between the middens of anonymous trash. Farmhouses in the fields scoured of their paint, wood sprung back and spooning like some fleshy decaying carcass; skin peels from bone, rippling off in ribbons red and rotten. My breath is smoking against the cold, ironic. And I want a cigarette, but it’s been weeks. And even if I were to break that promise, it’s pouring and wet cigarettes aren’t worth much. So I’ll breath against the chill and watch the howling clouds of cold that come from between my lips and pretend they’re ashen plumes of nicotine nightmares that I so deeply wish to dream again.

I am not attached to a dead weight, but I myself am heavy.

My feet drag forward against the grain, wet grasses wrapping my ankles like some poorly done present. And beyond the field there is a haze, some sullen mist that cloaks the edge of the earth in a dimness today, too dreary. What lies beyond the mist? Beyond the dark jungle of used-to-be homes, decaying and tilting with the wind—what becomes? To not lose heart in a place like this—where the road breaks beneath your feet and the noon sky grows black before four. Don’t lose heart.

This land is gullied and broken—the soft black talc breezes through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along the sea floor, cold and creeping, permeating the soles of my boots to spread to my skin to my muscle to my bloodstream until I myself am nothing but black ink; a new stain on this land, nothing more than a tarred gum-spot.

Long before I was here, there was life—before packs of dogs ran wild looking for the left behind, before weeds sprouted between the cracks of concrete unkempt, before when homes were homes with families full and lively and—and here, just here.

Something looms in the space between dream and day, some ungraspable thing—creature without face or form.

My hair has been plastered down to my cheeks, fixed tight like some close helmet. I stand in the downpour, how far have I come? Far away a faint rumble of thunder muffled in the dusk. I walk through the empty city; neighborhoods that have turned to meadows, concrete laid soft with grasses green, an abandoned complex of municipal buildings overgrown with wildflowers.

Abandoned, but not lifeless.

The sun has yet to abandon this city.

[emrsn-]

Walk Eight: Fictitious

Heaving heavy breaths against the slope, heels slipping back with every step forward—as if earth became ocean and he was made to battle some rapid tide that pulled at his ankles. The grasses wrapped around his legs sinking him deeper and deeper into the wet earth, leaving bloody brown veins of mud up his calves. Feet enveloped by some sodden grain rubbing between big toe and little until fissures in the soft skin bled red and raw; God he was tired. But the cold drove him forth, bending knees that creaked and whistled with strides taken; memories of old shipyards and bottle rockets swept through his mind leaving behind notes of nostalgia bittersweet.

            Trembling like some snared fox, the man took breaths of a relentless cold that seemed to spit his way with his every step. A rash of rain spread wild and violent washing graveled earth over his feet, the man looked up. He had spent so much time calculating his footing that he hadn’t paid much mind to where his feet had taken him. At the edge of the wood on a ridge overlooking a pasture, he found the world bathed in a gray light—like some painter had washed over his work with blues and grays soft and sweeping. But shadows snaked from the trees behind him as a shivering yellow sun crept timid into a world of cool colors, contrasting the brush and purpose of the painter.

            A faint whooshing rustled the trees as rusted leaves wandered their way down to the forest floor, did he dare walk into the field? Off the path into the grassland green and growing, heels trudging over a florid and living open-wide. Snapping stems and shrub and weed and brush and bug beneath his feet; he, some solitary sentinel standing at attention at the edge of the wood, did he dare abandon post?

            He was afraid—afraid of so much more than an open field and a snapped stem and a pair of wet socks stuffed with loose gravel. But the rain had moved on, he watched the wind carry the storm over the mountains—that was where the storm broke; some foreign attack cracking and booming against that stark gray that appeared again and again out of the shrouded flares of lightening. So he must move on, he told himself. Beat against the current and the grain, pushed forward now by an emerging sun. His form swollen far before him, drawn long into some spoiled ribbon by the stemming light.

            How far can a shadow stretch across an open field? Dreams which he now loathed to wake from; was he birthed to watch arboreal ghosts seeking greener pastures? Chasing lost leaves—reaching out to lands just past the grasses? Like grey blue creatures spread too thin into stains on the earth, shadow men leashed and crawling with the day. Was he to crawl with them?

 Let’s go, he said.

[emrsn-]

Walk Seven

Light up my cigarette important. Because I don’t want to do this.

Walking on wobbly feet through foreign ground, grinning up chin dripping Clementine. Hands poking holes with fingers fat and pink through dusted dunes of red rock raw and rumbling over miles of a great open wide. I am trying to remember. Remember the divots of dirt impressed into the creases of balmy palms, remember the glint of a sun brighter than bright, remember the feet that carried me and the hands I held. I am trying to remember for what so long I have tried to forget.

Sunlight on a broken column—she walks. Holes of missing hippocampus stuffed tight by miles of earth collected in the tread of a left boot. Red rock—mudded fingers—raisin stuck between the teeth—T.S Elliot on the mind. She holds a hand up waiting for response, for the grip, for the flesh of fingers entwined into a waffled creature solid and secure. Layers of sediment build on her skin blue and red and burnt brown and she has become a rock; stagnant.

Scrape off the exterior to reveal skin beneath.

Pulled forward by her hand held she is high on the plateau in view of a Hoodoo. They have come from the pit—the stomach of a canyon wide, she has walked through the mouth and entangled her feet with the intestines of Bryce, leaving nothing but prints and a dropped photograph behind. This world has been bathed in red, rocks twist mortal like a broken neck unnatural. She is in Utah, but she does not know. The where was not important then—the details just fuzzy facts that sat in the buzzing background of a burrowed brain. It was not about the where. It was about the what—what was real and tangible and touchable.  

Crescent colored sky—the first rainbow. A virgin accident of a

misty day folds itself into the memory. Stringing together thoughts of years passed, years during, years before The Clear. Before caustic became calm, before sour tongues pressed dry began to salivate: To recapture a memory of a relentless child—I am not supposed to be here. I am not supposed to—

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

Sinking into my common room couch, surveying the disaster of what it means for me to write about my childhood; I need to breath. I don’t do this, and I want to replace don’t with won’t and won’t with can’t, but I can’t do that. It does not make sense to make sense of my seven-year-old mind. It does not make sense, words spit wired and fantastical nonsense like some misinterpret dream.

I do not have anything I want to say to you;

No—that is a lie.

I know how many steps it takes to get to the yellow fire hydrant by your house—toe touching heel in front, no gaps between feet as soles press to concrete. No gaps.

Maybe the scars on my knees aren’t really scars. Knees, ankles, arms, thighs, wrists, back. Maybe that cut crescent on my forehead is just a reminder, a memory of some far and floating recollection. Physical memories bear down on the skin—weighting the body until the muscles collapse and deteriorate.

Skin becomes earth again—

Skin becomes mineral becomes dirt becomes rock pressed deep.

She is rock.

She walks amongst her forebears, few grey trees stipple the burnt background.

Boulders stack into elevated angels of orange Hoodoos, leering over her head with arms outstretched into arches and towers tall. Palms press to rock—to the breast of some beating creature. Beating creature. Beating the odds back with bloody little fists curled closed and clutching a rock precious.

I had pet rocks as a kid.

Thought them funny, and cute.

Thought them friends.

Glued on dollar-store googly eyes, sat them on the mantle. I was allowed one from each trip. We weren’t there to destroy, or to take, Mom would say. But Dad would slip a rock in his pocket. Every time. Yellowstone, Red Wood, Grand Canyon, Pescadaro, you name it. But I took that rock from Bryce. It was the first thing I stole. I took it and I held it tight until it rubbed smooth around the edges. Until Bryce engrained himself into my palm permanent. Engrained physically, but still I cannot seem to remember—

 Shape without form, shade without color,

Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;

 And then there is a flash and a whip and a memory of striking light hits the brain to illuminate the mountains. Fantastic shapes spin cadmium red veins through the cracks and the collapse and the fissures of mineral that drip down with the rain. And the thunder is deafening and she is afraid that the cabin might erode away with the rock. Bulging spires and narrow fins fan out from the plateau, and she is on a stage. Watching the storm kindle the hoodoos, arches lit bright by the hits of electricity. Some fantastic conductor—flicking fingers extend to wands against the black sky. Watching the orchestral erosion of millions of years like a time lapse, creating deep slot canyons for some planet foreign.

For surely this is not our earth—fissures deep contracting into some hearth unknown. 

For surely this is not our earth—

            For surely—

            For surely this is not—

 This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

[emrsn-]

The Mile Around

Woman in the window; bird birthed blue and cold in a wicked wind. Trudging in some terraced field, some great open-wide. The wind so expertly turning hair to whip, lashing cheeks red, raw, and wicked—pedals of thought twist tart and insecure.

A mountain lined by her arboreal army; damned to wander forward with the wind. Voices murmur feathered secrets; rustled words between branches. Hands embracing the space between earth and sky, reaching out into her body and pulling at her breathe. Gusts pushing us onward towards some mineral motion—reach, reach out. Reach out and pull at the bowels of some great branchy beast; the embrace. Arboreal animal: gut the belly.

Wet feet. Metal burns cold in the ear.

            Look at where we are,

remember where we started out.

Watch her army fall; rusted arms drip dead to the ground. Watch her soldiers stand stagnant to the cold, embrace the fate. Embrace the cold. Embrace the hunger of winters mouth—winter who spits up the bile of some frigid stomach. And we will pick apart the contents, playing in the blood and bile of a war white and unwelcoming.   

But for now, watch the grass—no blade the same; the multitude of greens that spread their little bodies across the field. Little bodies that could, and would, entangle barefoot toes wet and mudded.

Let us walk palms faced skyward—catch the rain, the sediment that breezes through her breath,  leaf of the fallen solider.

Let us walk.

[emrsn-]

Walk Six: With an Expert

The wind is an expert at making me cry—cyclones heave deep dust ridden breaths into the corner of my eye, all I have to do is wait for the tear. The smear of black that drags its tail from lash to lip turning me into some hellish thespian; waterproof mascara is bullshit.

Woods words have faded, too long I’ve waited and the memory fails. Left only with soft whispers of an ecological vocabulary foreign, I re-walk hoping to remember his voice.

I stand listening to the birds, a cacophony of sound bounces between the cattail and off the water. It isn’t quiet out here, flurries of feathers violent flit between the stems. I sit on a bench beside the pond—the drying leaves of the late world carried on the cold and temporal winds. The chill fiddles it’s way between the buttons of my coat and I’m shivering, staring out into the open-wide. Alone; watered eyes, sustained by my breath, trembling.

This air smells of smoke and arboreal decay—or, maybe it doesn’t. Everything has smelled of smoke lately. I need to wash my clothes.

Wood’s hands rattled against the wind, fighting to stay stagnant but the shudder was inescapable. Holding twig between finger and thumb, he slowly oscillated the little babe to show it off; an elfin tree-trunk treasure knotted new, subtly weaving the autumnal reverie in turn as green became yellow became orange became burnt brown and crumbling. A moment mystic—brought back by the quiver, shaken off in the cold wind.

Ent was he, pressing palm to trunk with such affection. Shepherd of the forest, arboreal animal, to hold his hand how he held the trunk—

We are solitary sentinels

standing stagnant at attention

waiting for his beckon

waiting for winter to set in.

I, and the tree.

I, and the Wood.

I step forward—a single foot. Standing before a godless forest fated to perish. Standing idle before the white ash, waiting for the borer. Maybe I should be less afraid; I have seven years. Seven years before the core is pierced by beetle bloodthirsty—borer, grip the flesh while it can be gripped. As the ash will fall and turn to soil. Will I kneel in its wake? In the grave of my arboreal ancestors? Raise my face to the paling day, feel the breeze blow my lashes, scatter the ashes.

Am I willing to wait?  

Is he?

[emrsn-]

Walk Five: What I didn’t see

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes with the backs of her hands. A cigarette is good for what? She said. Seven minutes, right?

This lung, and this heart. They’re filled with tar.

I stood still for such a long time. For such a long time, I stood still. Romanticizing the rain and the chill, my mouth filled with doubt—doubt in the form of rainwater, filling my throat. Filling my gut. Some pot-bellied wet monster standing in the barefoot wood.

And I didn’t hear the trees fall, but I imagined. Shearing limbs cracked long and dry, salivating at the rains touch, skin peeling from bone. My clothes would cling, collaring my breast and rib as I stood in the bloom of splintering wood. Scoop up the bedding of the forest floor, fold and wrap myself into it. Become earth, wait for the bloom.

Wet cigarettes aren’t worth much.

Terrible things happen to good people. I didn’t see it happen—but I see her in my dreams. The flourish of fall, orange and effervescent, came in flames. Enveloping both body and brick with the heavy swell of an early end; how does someone disappear?

In a thick smoke.

In a thick wood.

A bench of wet wood—I look to my feet. Muddied and bloodied, how many bugs are beneath my toes? Insects crawling in the spaces between earth and leaf; I want to dig my fingers into the dirt, ripping out handfuls of our fat veiny planet, watching the worms writhe in the curls of my fingers: alive.

I want to scream, but I don’t.

I want to smoke, but I don’t.

I want to cry.

The world is burning; the mountains just starting to catch. The riptide of October that all too quickly pulls your summer from your arms, your mother from your arms.  

 How can I write about what I didn’t see?

[emrsn-]

Walk Four: Another path

I’m terrified.

I tucked away the photo, curved the strap of my purse tight into my shoulder, and set off. And as I walked through the expanses of the great Vermont open-wide I couldn’t help but wonder what brought me here—what collected moments created thoughts that huddled in the space between brain-matter and skull. Waiting in the space in-between, waiting to be absorbed and curdled into content apparent to my conscious—formed into words into sentences into decisions into action and movement and life; life. Waiting to become current.  

I had a dream about a boy—I cradled him in my eyes from across the room unsure if he was child or lover. My uncertainty nipped my fingers as I tried to reach out to him, and I knew if I spoke our relationship would become clear. But I couldn’t decide my words; my words would make him one or the other: child or lover. I didn’t know what I wanted him to be.

I won’t hurry. I won’t rush. I’ll walk steady and barefoot on the gravel to feel every edge of every rock. I’ll climb slow up the slant, watching the white veined flowers of the grass stand straight and chilly, watching the mountain rise like a great fist. I’ll punch up the slope towards the cold, the crest.

Where would I be if I were not here?

Where would I be if I hadn’t known her?

My limbs feel like weights sewn to my shoulders—the rain rubs like steel-wool and angry mothers to my back; I need to start wearing sunscreen. If someone asked me why I took this walk, I’d tell them it was for the mountains.

Do you know the song “Sea of Love” by Cat Power? Come with me my love, to the sea, the sea of love. It starts soft, a simple strum pattern: down, down, up, down, up, down. Do you remember when we met? That was the day I knew you were my pet. Four chords: I like to start it off with A#, then a subtle switch to D7, followed by D#, ending with C7. I want to tell you how much I love you. It’s a beautiful song really. I wonder if her lover followed.

There is a whole history in the hunt for my happiness—a history not yet fully unraveled. Does is sit hidden and stagnant in my near future? Just past the crown of this mountain? In sight on this alternate route, but seemingly unattainable? Or does it sit rotting behind the rock of some path unwalked by me, disturbed and dying beneath the compressed soil of some other footprint… does it exist? My existential crisis, in reference to the existence of happiness; fucking Christ. It’s a Tuesday night.

I wonder if this was the right path—was the goldenrod more yellow and vibrant on the other? Was the gravel less sharp? Was the wind less wicked and the sun softer on my back? Was it better?

Was it better?

Where would I be if not here?

Where would I be if not here?

 I’m glad to sit on the edge of the mountain; the great strain has ended.

The fear has not.

[emrsn-]

Walk Three: Off-road

The trees are colliding to create geometric masterpieces across my eyes, Euclid on the mind I walk bare-footed thinking of August and of tattooing proposition forty-seven on my high-school teachers inner-forearm. I miss home.

            I’m anxious. My left foot is bleeding, the soft sole rubbed wrong and raw against a rock, and my body is embracing the world red. And I need to get a handle on my accidental alliteration. But like the bowels of some great beast exposed, the roots of nearby trees twist caustic and trip up not only my feet, but my words along with them.  The tuberous twists bleed sap into the earth. And we’re all bleeding now. And we’re converging. Life draining red and crystalline from veins both wooden and flesh.

            And I miss her the most when I walk through the woods. When the sun breaks through the pitiless dark of deep tree-shadows shining that cold lemon light that stings your eyes. And I’m crying. And I’m bleeding. And my palms are cruddy with sap, dirt, and blood. And I wish I were a tree.

             My mother once told me how afraid she was of my words—that my lies became truth if I just said them sweetly enough. That they were soft and rolled smooth and warm off the tongue. Like a kiss that leaves a lovers taste lingering. But I was seven and I didn’t yet understand the importance of truth—or kissing. So lying was my medium of expression; lying became acting became writing became truth. Became romantic ideas of a tree not being a tree, but some wild arboreal creature with feral limbs unruly and outstretched taking up more space than my arms ever could—ever would.  

            I look down to my feet, moving through a medley of mudded grass and twigs, skin mingling with real unedited earth. Half-moons of mud trapped beneath toe and nail. And I want to lie down—right here. Lie in this mud and let my fingers twist up in the grass and imprint my back with a brushstroke sporadic and unpredictable.

I’m feeling incredibly nostalgic, goddammit.

I miss home. Home: where I loved—we loved. Where we loved by swimming in green until our backs blacken, shins scraping against rock, water rolling off bodies bare, dancing in our underwear, tumbling down hills until nauseous, peeling off burnt skin in foreign countries. Where I was humbled to be a part of something so good and organic and soft and enveloping. A place of people good and kind and earnest and afraid. I’m having trouble saying goodbye.

            I’ve made it to the edge of the wood, but I don’t step further. 

This is the place I live. This is the place I live.

There is something beautiful about leaving a place that you love so completely; a compulsory reflection ensues.

I walk out into the sun.

[emrsn-]

Walk Two: Cormac

            Two girls sit side-by-side eating a can of peaches, one licks her fingertips as the other tips back the can and drinks the syrup. A single stray streak drips down her chin and circles her collar bone to find its way down between her breasts. They look at each other; she laughs.

            I imagine him walking—how would he walk? Would there be a liveliness to his gait? A swagger? A sway? A stumble? I’ve always imagined him a quiet man, soft edges enveloping his features warm and round and welcome. A father—or maybe, a grandfather. The grandfather I’d always imagined my friends having, and been jealous of. Jealously: what a thing.

            Look, he might say. He might point at a passing bird, the blush of a bare limb—the underside of its rusted wing. And I might smile to him—no, I do. There is a distinction. We are together now.

I ask him what kind of bird it was. And he tells me some grandiose fable of the rare red-winged starling that escaped from the nearby African aviary, native to Ethiopia but somehow making its way through Vermont. And I listen because his voice is soft and his words full, and because he is kind.

Let him be kind. Let men be kind. Let me be kind.

             We walk in the cold evening with the darkness dropping down casting our limbs long and languid against the grass. And we move on north to the trees—towards coveted mountains that seemed so reachable, so close. Fables are fun.

            A break through the trees, maybe a ditch. We cut through the weeds to find a path, what could’ve once been a drivable road before I was born. Slabs of cracked macadam rough against the soles of my shoes, my mother would moan. She always tells me to pick up my feet—I scuff along. Crumbs of earth coagulate in the tread of my left shoe forming a slight but uncomfortable slope in my step; I have to stop to pick out the collected dirt. I undress and cradle my shoe, picking away at the soot with a twig. I am a character: slouching with my single bare-foot surrounded by the mineral waste of a forgotten road, The Road, he smiles.

            What a moment. We continue our walk. We watch the flocks of migratory birds against the last leaks of sun—black smears against a blue-black sky. We hear the crickets—how long has it been? Time can be measured in the depth of our surrounding sounds. Here: the echo of the crickets. Home: the babel of a howling drunk.

Look at where I am. I live here. I live here. I miss home.

            It is very cold. And the bitter blackness of 11pm in the Vermont woods is biting at my ankles. And I’d say I’m afraid but I’m too proud, so I tell him I’m cold. And hungry. And tired. And he sighs. And I’m imagining January in this very spot that we stand—Winter is coming. And if we stayed stagnant soon we would be covered by the wrappings of a winter wonderful. Drifting deeper towards death, our feet would drag and limbs go blue.

            Cormac is looking at the dead roadside trees.

            It’s going to be ok, he tells me.

            How do you know?

            I just do.

            We go back.

[emrsn-]

Walk One: Human & Natural

Locomotion: the movement of my limbs. The pressing flats of my feet against earth. And I’ll move forward, tips of my toes slicing towards the fabric of a future soft and inviting—full of bees and flowers and sweaty upper lips and palms pressed to pink inner thighs and rotten scattered apple bits. I miss home.

It is my love of mud that brought me here. My love of fiery fall mountains and winters white and colder than anything and everything. But I forgot about the heat. Drenched by the salt of my misgivings in thinking that Vermont might somehow be a humidity-free haven, I walk on.

“I’d walk to the end of the world for you,” he said to her smiling. And then he ran, and he became a little speck between thumb and fore-finger. And we watched together, her watching him and I watching them. And I watching her skip gay and giddy to the end, tripping over breaths too deep and exhaustingly wide smiles. She too becoming a smear against the sky. I need glasses.

I want to be swaddled by the earth—subdued into the blues and greens that so simply can be separated as grass and sky. I want to relax. I want to sleep in the green that wraps itself around my toes and tickles. I want to sleep.

I’ve wandered my way to the edge of the thicket—to the juxtaposition of wire and wood, power versus plant. Overlapping stokes: half of them connected to the earth, the other half connecting us to our internet. I’ve passed all woke and slumbering people. Passed boys huddled under leafy canopies, clustered under awnings of trees and blankets; sleeping men are boys, small and fetal. I’ve left behind these sleeping babes. And now I’m alone. And my body is tired, and I envy the boy. And I envy the dream. And I envy the grass. And I envy the aimless wanderer. And I envy the little gray bird perched on the power line.

I want so desperately to pause and breath. To just breath—to do nothing. Although I suppose that’s not nothing. I suppose nothing is impossible, not in the sense of your fourth-grade baseball coach shouting: “You can do it! Nothing is impossible!” But that nothing-ness is impossible. How do you do nothing? How do you do anything? I don’t know anything—but, I do know how to boil water.

I cannot stop my thoughts from oscillating between actual thought and thinking of thought—of how thought works. How do thoughts work? Am I in a crisis of some weird and non-productive introspective brooding? What has walking done to me? Has it humbled me? Is that what this pit in my stomach is? Some soft and shy gooey center that’s married my sweat and proceeds to drip out of my pores?

On my way back I make a detour to walk through the goldenrod behind CAPA. And I want to cry, but I don’t. And I want to sing Casimir Pulaski Day with my best friend. And I want to be in love. And I want to keep walking, but my feet are sore and bare. And I am a marshmallow. And I’ve been burned black. But I can still be made into a fucking bangin’ smore.

There’s a fallen baby bird in front of me, blood red beautiful. I go home.