nye shard

NYE Shard
December 31, 2019

2019. Clutching the shards of a decade’s wreckage I shoulder my day pack and step forth into the confiscating night. Feathers blow across the cobblestones and what do I tell you, of the dead leaves beneath the footsteps of a nomad with no home? Drumbeats reverberate through the stone fortress of the city amidst cheers and cries, shattering of glass bottles, party-goers at their mayhem, though nooks hold the homeless like any other night. Maniacal the iridescent streets blocked off for Hogmanay so I skirt the barricades and slip through secret alleyways, mountain-bound. On strong legs I roam, my rhythm untouchable, someone gestures for a light I can’t give and I brush past unable to be budged from my unbreakable stride I glide beyond garish lights and blaring sound and leave it all behind. Soon to town’s edge through a chink in the fence into a little patch of woods I press through to the ribbon of empty road and beyond it the pitchblack mountain makes itself felt, immense presence of starblocking darkness.

I drop my pack to readjust, pull out my headlamp and strap it to my forehead, then continue on, ankle-strong. My headphones double as earmuffs and it’s explosions in a four chambered heart moon ate the dark experimental pianotracks that guide my steps along the empty road that loops up around the invisible mountain. Suddenly I spot a figure coming down the hill toward me, bound for town; and as we pass, it seems she almost turns to wish me a happy new year, and a little burst of longing flares up in me; but swiftly I disappear into the night. I follow the way up until it diverges, the road goes one way and the silent desolate darkness of the mountain path ascends into lonely heights, only the crunch of boots on gravel, the swing of my torchbeam across the frosty ground, pack strapped to my back with everything I need to survive, elite as I’ve ever been, only when I’m well into the hills do I pause and look back for the view. The jutting crag severs the vision, a line of darkness above which ripple the city lights like a bed of embers. Over them hangs a fang-colored quarter-moon, low in the sky, and from somewhere deep down inside of me flutters up a little cry of wonder that escapes my lips and catches the wind and goes whirling out over the mountainside like the cry of a lost bird in the night.

Last hours of a decade, final footsteps of a year, and here I am, halfway up a hillside and half a lifetime distant from the man I hoped to be. And so I climb, in penance for every blunder, every last bumbling absurdity I perpetrated this year and every year of my whole aching life. Long switchbacks of stone steps are carved into the mountainside, and if every footfall was an act of repentance for every grain of folly, if every step of this ascent could represent one more foolish mistake I’ve made, well, it’d be a long climb. My lamp glitters on the icy rime that coats the stone increasingly as I ascend, pitch-dark but for my thin beam. I pick my way up the treacherous trail with unusual care, for the drop off is sheer; and no one knows I’m out here. Wildly the wind blows and I spiral up into the darkness. I look back over the abyss: the moon has caught fire and reddened, hangs dangling over the edge of the skyline. I look back over the years: and as I climbed, images of the whole decade flooded through me; and I think I left behind a few droplets of seawater on that depthdark mountainside.

The path ascends sharply and then loops up over the shoulder of the mountain to a sprawling hilltop, subsidiary to the peak I seek but a place to rest for a moment. I drop my pack in the howling wind to pull out a heavier jacket and can’t think straight from how fierce it blows. I quench my light but then I freeze: I’m glued to the spot; I know the sheer cliff drops off somewhere, but it’s invisible in the dark. I flick the light back on to confirm my bearings. I’m on open ground, grassy hilltop buffeted by the shredding wind, almost dangerously sharp, but I’ve got the gear I need. I flick the light off again. And there it is, all splayed out below me in glimmering panorama: the lights of the city and the dark mass of the distant hills; castle rock illuminated in a golden glow, silhouettes of the cathedral spires; and the shard of moon going down hard over the rooftops of the town.

The deepest aching is the pain of having let them down, all the people I loved and the ones who tried to love me. There was so much I had inside of me that I wanted to give the world. But I fell short; I’ve lived so far out of alignment with the best in me. I never thought myself the kind of man to nurse regrets but the wreckage of time burns with blunders I needn’t have made and moments I shouldn’t have missed and friends I wish I called when I had the chance but who got tired of living. Just too many times I could have said something and I didn’t, too many times I should have been somewhere and I wasn’t; and even now maybe someone needs me and I’m not there; because I’m here; and how I wish I could curl into the darkness of night and let that be forever. I fix my eyes on the abyss. The moon is burning, going up in flames, melting into the rim of the earth where she’s sunk to touch the embers of the skyline; and when there’s nothing left but a heap of smoldering lunar cinders, I switch the headlamp on and shoulder my pack to gain the true summit just above.

A few minutes of scrambling and I’ve made it. I drop my pack and kill the lamp and stand upon the darkened peak. Nothing up there but darkness and cold and rushing wind, though little volleys of huge music reach me in swells, carried on gusts, and even the faint pulse of the drumbeats coming up from very far below. Oh, the moon is down, and the wind is cold, but I’m snug in my heavy coat, and what’s more, I carried up a thermos full of tea. I sit with my back to the summit cairn, legs dangling over the edge, and pour myself a steaming mug. The cityscape twinkles gloriously. I can see the neon lights of the christmas market and the miniature ferris wheel, flashing in crazy patterns; the castle slammed into the bluff, bathed in pink now, and the white webbing of the bridge that spans the firth. Then I glimpse the cluster of red lights of the construction cranes, asleep in new town on their single legs, and a warm shock of memory has me next to tears: not everything has gone wrong. Oh I ache, for the moments I squandered and missed; but that’s human life; and now the decade is swirling into its final countdown. There’s already fireworks going up here and there; the slow bursts of confetti look so small from up here, they burst so low over the rooftops, you’d think they’d have flown so much higher into the sky.

There’s a loneliness to be sure. But the solitude sharpens me to my self. I feel centered, steady, solid; and the truth is, if I peer honestly into the four-chambered depths—there’s nowhere on earth I would rather be. All I ever wanted was to do my part: and here I am. Everything else is obliterated in the furnaces of gratitude. Anyway, this is nothing compared to last year: I think of the crowds in the street their necks craned up, no roman candles from my window’s angle tho’ what I had was far more beautiful: the sight of their faces: explosions in their eyes a swarming mass of humanity gathered together I looked down upon and bore witness to. Someone had to do it. But that proximity was far lonelier than the safety of this distance. So if each year contains less loneliness than the last, is it safe to hope for closeness from 2020? Long volleys of fireworks shoot up from both sides of the blazing castle and explode into smithereens of color, and it seems a very long time before the faint cracklings reach my ears, and the sound of something like distant human voices united in a tremendous cheer. We shall see, what life may come to be, what things time holds and how the world unfolds from here.

Edinburgh, Scotland
December 31, 2019

http://www.davekorn.com

mic check

hello world

dry

my knuckles are cracked and bleeding.  the cold dry air here saps my body of moisture and still i drink too much coffee and not enough water.  i want to tell you everything but if i do then tears will come, and i’m too dry right now to let that happen.  the salt will sting my knuckles and i will wipe blood across my cheeks.  so maybe later.  as for now, i’ll just sit here, silent and anonymous in a cafe where nobody knows me, nobody can recognize me, i’ll keep my eyes down just in case, keep these sunglasses on even though the day’s inferno has slipped behind the mountain.  it’s cold and dry and the sky is cracked and bleeding.  the moon is out, also cracked in half but not bleeding.  trees everywhere are dying, which we find beautiful to witness, but when people are dying we do not find it beautiful to witness, even when they turn bright colors.  later i will tell you why it’s been two months since i’ve written.  i’ll tell you about my journey back across the desert and over the mountains, about the ways that God touched me despite the ferocity of my skepticism, how the fabric of the universe wove itself around my life and journey and delivered me into and out of the lives of the people i needed to meet, the inexplicable synchronicities and surrenderings, the woman whose pain i carried without knowing what was happening and the book i knew i was supposed to give her, i’ll tell you about the night i broke my rules and ended up in a strange city after dark, frigid, throwing up my hands and sitting on a bridge waiting for a sign and watching the mist come off the river and saying that i swear to fucking god i’ll sit out here until i catch hypothermia and freeze to death, enough of these fucking coincidences, i will sit here and i shall not be moved until you send me a sign or i die, one or the other, and i’ll tell you about the hours i waited and then i’ll tell you about the boy who came for me.  i want to tell you all of it but right now i can’t.  i want to tell you about new york city.  dc.  how i packed up a car all over again and set out on the last leg of my journey.  i want to tell you all the people i’ve seen, the places i’ve been, the sunsets i’ve felt, smoking cigarettes with janna in nashville and wandering minneapolis with andrea and milwaukee and the rivers and the colors and wisconsin autumn and following school buses and watching the kids get off and remembering what it felt like to get home from school, cold parking lots cooking meals out of my trunk, i wish more than anything i could tell you about the moon over the badlands, i wish i could share with you that silence, that stillness, but anything other than a long empty blank page would be a lie, just like all of this has been, i’ve made it all up, everything you’ve read here, none of it was ever true.  i want to tell you about the dragonfly cemetery, i meant to write about it but just never did, i want to tell you about the runaway teenagers who gave me a ride in their stolen truck, i won’t forget them but i never mentioned that one either, all i can think about right now is all the things i will never be able to tell you, i can’t tell you what the sky is doing right now, or what is happening inside my heart, i want to tell you about the woman i met that last night on the road at the rest area in wyoming, how when i met her everything she saw was ugly and when i left her something she saw was beautiful, how i haunted the truck stops at that exit in cheyenne, giving travelin kids rides across town because i still hadn’t found a single hitchhiker, black hills sunset, chalk sky mountains, tar acid blackout, ceramic moon roots, perth string monster, now i’m just putting words together.  joe read from finnegan’s wake.  wish i could tell you about that too, but i can’t, i just can’t.  the most insane music was crying and the candle was twitching and i was high and in the lotus position at a house party and just wanted to run but couldn’t twitch a finger, there is just so much, too much, forever too much and each day that goes by is another thousand moments that will be forgotten.  i should delete all this nonsense but won’t do that either.  i want to tell you where i am and why i’m here and what is happening to me.  i can do that much at least, can’t i?  i’m in boulder colorado.  that’s all i’ve got.  i can’t tell you right now why i’m here or how long i’ll stay or what i’m doing.  wish i could but somehow sometimes in the space of a hiccup a person could forget everything they ever knew, be left with nothing but a man walking silently down a street, into the glare cast by an orange tree-feathered lantern and then out again

wind-feathered rivers&tides

I sat down at a table near a guy in a café.  “Let me ask you something,” I said to break the ice.  He looked up from his newspaper with mild irritation.  “You ever just step back and take stock of your whole life?”  He stared at me for a moment.  “No, not really.”  I slept by the river that night, just a flat sheet of glass but swift, reflective bridge lights bubbling by floating through the moon, white and steady with bats darting back and forth skimming the surface.  Woke up and kept walking, I’ve been wandering around this random town strumming my ukulele as I walk.  I still don’t really know how to play but I found 4 chords that if you put them together in a certain order they break your heart and I’ve just been strumming that over and over again.  I’m getting dirtier and dirtier.  I’m thinking about the idea of letting this journey come to an end and I don’t know what I would do instead or where I would go but I do know that I like being around music and art and dirty bare feet and long hair and that I like coffee shops and bright stars and red wine + moonlit porches as well as medium length walks on the beach of course.  Caught a ride south with a Jamaican immigrant who liked my hair and then caught a ride south with an old Hungarian couple and a little therapy dog and then caught a ride south with a momma and her 10-year-old son who offered to let me crash in her yoga studio if necessary and then caught a ride south with a guy who last year quit his job and took six months to hitchhike with his girlfriend from Portland to Panama and then caught a ride beyond the sunset and got dropped off somewhere in the dark nowhere, stars behind black patchwork clouds and wandered through a desolate neighborhood until I reached an old depot of shipyard bones.  There was an empty meadow of wild purple flowers that can be brewed into tea, and I set up camp near the edge where wooden skeleton of pier rose from the water and gray ghost seagulls floated in endless loops.  I slept damp and then gray morning mist drifted cold through the harbor shrouding hazy cliffs around a disappeared sea, the tide pulled back a quarter mile and left a thin silvery river through a new exposed meadow of gray, the bones of the pier looked ghostly poking from land, algae hanging from decaying crossbeams in the swirling fog.  Walked back to the world and met a guy who traded me a pocket watch for some tea I’d picked.  South on 101, drizzling Pacific Northwest skies became blazing California sunshine and I hit a ramp pointing into central Cali beside trees drenched in golden light.  A car pulled up loaded with gear and hula hoops and a beautiful girl got out to make space for me, she was the kind of girl I could fall in love with instantly, a dread or two and feathers in her hair, peacock-feathered top hat, nose ring and eyebrow gem free spirited sister soul.  She left me on a highway somewhere and asked where I was heading, anyway.  “I don’t know exactly what this means or where it is, how to build it or find it… but I’m going home,” I told her.  She pointed at her chest.  “In here,” she whispered.

Roots

Hitching out of Ashland, I caught a ride with barefoot white-haired long white-bearded California Jim who passed me a tupperware container of fresh blueberries he’d just picked and drove me down into California into Shasta City.  I sat outside at a stone table in the presence of the mountain for hours.  I didn’t feel as solid as Mount Shasta but I did feel rooted.  I’ve been feeling rooted.  My roots are not buried in place; I’m rooted in my worldview, my being in touch with what I feel, my ability to connect with people, my journey itself.  Travel has helped me grow these kind of roots, yet what role does travel actually play anymore?  The profound is not found in going to all sorts of new places but rather in seeing the places with open eyes.  Not in convincing people to let me into their cars but in the open hearted honest conversations that unfold.  None of this has anything to do with traveling.

When dusk began to fall I walked down the railroad tracks that cut through town and found a pine clearing beneath huge gnarled redwoods; chilled with some PCT thru-hikers and then set up camp when they left.  Lay out my bag on the soft ground, it was so comfortable and warm, and the moonlight fell through the redwoods into the clearing and the sun was gone, black hillcrest contour against sharp dark blue sky, I was mindful and breathed as deeply as I knew how and it was sacred to be alone, but also I wanted someone to share this with, not just this but everything, my entire life, all that will happen but especially all that has already happened.  I want someone to know me.  But even the chunks and fragments of life that have been shared, even those long nights we said we’d never forget, the sunrises and the best cups of coffee, the swimming pool sleepover parties and balloons and the first time you ever tried cotton candy and it melted and dissolved instantaneously and you immediately craved more and were temporarily addicted to this sweet crystal non-substance and everything else awesome and horrible in your whole life, hasn’t it all been more or less forgotten, you could remember a moment if you wanted to but how many times will you ever actually do that for any particular one?  And the people you grew up with, the lovers you’ve held, the friends you’ve entrusted with precious secrets, haven’t you fallen out of touch with most or all of them?  Nobody knows what you’ve been through, you can tell stories but they’re just that, and nobody will ever know the whole journey of how you became what you are.  And I was just thinking about that as the moon quivered through evergreen over the darkening ridge, and the trees were so tall and strong and the moonlight so pale and steady and really the only thing I know is that I AM going to die, and this moment too will not be remembered.  There is nothing I can do or keep or share or make that will actually persist, and the gravity of my impermanence sank in all over again, and I just let my chest seize up with the full weight of that truth.  I touched the strong thick trunk and my tears fell on redwood roots and soaked into the earth, into the roots, and now a small part of me is in that tree, my body already beginning to nourish the world

i lost things

 

first i lost my guitar.  i didn’t lose it but i let it break and then i got rid of it so i basically lost it.  then i lost my map in that car.  i know what losing it had to teach me but now i have no map.  then i was in a car with travelin kids, a beat up $300 jeep, one guy with his guitar was the radio, we stopped at a gas station and sat next to a fresh produce stall and flew signs that said “buy us watermelon” until someone bought us watermelon and we sat there in the sun broke as hell and dirty and ragged with sweet pink juice running down our faces, beards, and then we got back in the car and i lost my phone, had it on my lap and climbed out mid-text to check something on the roof and got back in and drove away.  i lost all my pictures from the last two months and that’s why these blogs don’t have pictures anymore, i lost the faces and places, all the writing i had on that phone, i lost audio recorded conversations and videos of driving at sunset, i lost my connection to people faraway, i lost knowing what time it is other than “a little while til getting dark”.  in crestone and on the road and on the phone and in myself through talking and learning, i lost my story, i lost being able to identify with it, so i lost a piece of what i thought my identity was.  i haven’t yet lost the search, but i’ve lost the feeling that the search is what i’m searching for.  i lost money inside cups of coffee.  my headphones broke, so i lost those, and now with no phone or headphones i lost music, that is unless i’m the one making it.  the other night i got kicked out of a casino for not gambling.  i am still restless.  i am on the road, i am about to go to sleep several hundred miles from where i woke up this morning, and i feel restless.  that’s funny.  that’s hilarious.  so if this fierce restlessness is not eased by movement then what does that mean about my restlessness and what does it mean about my journey and what does it mean about me?

i lost my pants.

i was hiking up this hill in ashland oregon to find a spot to camp and whatever i walked through stuck to my pants and before i realized what was happening several hundred sharp little burrs were embedded in my pants on the outside and the inside and in my leg hairs and sandals.  i tried to brush them off but they were stuck fast.  i plucked one off and then tried to rip them off in a handful but a dozen little spines embedded themselves in my fingers and i had to use tweezers to pull them out so i took off my pants and they were crinkled together by a thousand immovable burrs.  so i didn’t actually lose my pants but i basically did.

the only thing i could do was pull the burrs off gingerly, one by one.  i tried to unfold the pants to get an idea of the whole situation, to see what i’d have to go through the clean the pants, but i couldn’t get the pants flat, and then folds of fabric were stuck together, hiding dozens of burrs, and really there was no way to get a view of the whole thing at once–i just had to start removing burrs.  and each burr was a deep-seated personal issue i need to work through, selfishness or dishonesty or judgment, a thousand little weaknesses and fears, and there was no shortcut, i just had to confront each burr one by one.  i pulled them off as orange sky puddled between hills.  i slept on the mountainside and woke on the mountainside and pulled them off as i walked down the hill in the morning.  i pulled them off outside the cafe.  every once in a while i felt the pant legs, i’d periodically glance at the whole project, but then i’d just go back to working with individual burrs, one by one.  and eventually they were all gone.

 

Tribe

Why sleep in a $300,000 house
when you could sleep
under a $6 million bridge
and eat wild blackberries for breakfast, washed in dew?
Really, all I’m trying to do
is reestablish a harmony that has been lost
when the sun rises, i rise
when the sun sleeps, i sleep, the cycle born
not of aesthetic ideals but of practical necessity
windy blackberry bushes wiggle beneath a purple sky
Humans are the only animal to use money to get what they want when they want it
and thus feel entitled to the food and service
what room is there left for gratitude in all of this?
“how do you eat”
i’m tired of that question
how do the birds eat?  the wolves, the spiders, the antelope?
they be what they are
(creatures who live in a world that provides them with nourishment)
they do their work and wait patiently for the right moment
we spin webs, stalk prey, build traps, search dumpsters, harvest berries
is knowing precisely when you’ll next eat necessarily a good thing?
no animals know.  and sometimes they get less than they’d prefer, sometimes way more than they can use
but it’s always enough
harmony.  i become the animal we pretend we are not
there are a set of strategies
hunting, trapping, and fishing have worked well for thousands of years
though these tactics are more or less obsolete in the urban environment
so we become urban predators
adopt a new set of techniques
(dumpster diving, white-boxing, foraging, finding burned pizzas and day-old pastries, etc.)
and i tell you this
there is not always lobster and creme brulee
but there is always Enough.
rows and rows of GMO produce in corporate supermarkets
deaden instincts, make us forget
that there is another way
but we can remember, if we choose to
you can eat without money.
try it and you will see
and if you do try it, it will make you have faith in something
(God, nature, yourself, the universe, the goodness of humanity, the wastefulness of America)
come sit with us on the corner, watching
all the happy people go by
alone encased in metal/glass boxes on rolling rubber
or walking by quickly with eyes steady ahead
you’d be surprised how many shoot us looks of disgust/contempt
or maybe you wouldn’t
we don’t have much
but we touch, share food
play music, make things,
celebrate the sensation of living,
of morning sunlight on skin

i sat outside a truck stop

becoming sun-baked human ziti and trying to decide where to go next.  i’d been nonsensically crisscrossing idaho, from Idaho Falls west to boise then back east to Mountain Home.  do i head north to montana?  i already came from west.  i already came from east.  do i go to the coast?  to seattle or portland?  to yellowstone?  to california?  back to boise?  it didn’t matter and i couldn’t decide so i just sat there for 3 days slumped on the ground leaning against my pack strumming my ukulele absently, laughing at how ridiculous everyone looked, how ridiculous they were to come and go endlessly, laughing at myself and how ridiculous i looked lying there in front of this truck stop and how ridiculous it was for me to go back and forth and up and down and zigzag all across this huge crazy country in search of something that doesn’t exist out there, i sat there for 3 days laughing and strumming as people gave me money and food and offered me rides that i turned down over and over and over

colors and light

Slept under a bridge last night
million dollar real estate
right by the river lights,
orange lanterns shimmering in ripples
hit the road in the morning heat, blue cloud puddles dripping over asphalt
Hitchhiking is easier the day after a mass shooting is all over the news
Sike
couldn’t catch a ride for a while
went and sat in the shade
you’re supposed to be trying to catch a ride, my brain said
just chill for a minute, my heart said.
an hour later the impulse gripped me to move,
walk to the truck stop
so i did
and immediately a guy eyed my pack and offered me a ride west
no i can’t explain how these things keep happening
barely moments after i think “i’m hungry”
somebody walks by and offers me a slice of pizza or a bag full of ripe plums
or else i trip over apples fallen from the tree i’m walking under
[not joking]
so he took me an hour west
it wasn’t until after he drove away
that I realized I left my map in his car
but maybe that’s a sign i need to
stop relying on colored lines and pages to tell me where to go
arrived somewhere
hiked up onto the bridge over immense tangles of highway overpasses
hot wind slamming through steel
the mountains took a bath in the light
everywhere egg drop clouds falling colors raged
a dirty traveler walks through the dusty wind
drank a can of juice outside the gas station and
hid from the dust clouds
then barefoot on the grass to meditate with the ruby red grapefruit sunset
slept tucked away in shadows but
sprinklers came on in the middle of the night
unfamiliar city + 3AM + 45 degrees + soaked and all gear soaked
it was miserable but it was ok
i knew what to do, how to take care of myself
not to be happy or comfortable or well-rested
but to be ok and safe and alive
at the bus stop the next morning a woman circled around and handed me a piece of paper
“saturday bus service doesn’t start until 10”
she was deaf
i scribbled down, “are you heading into town?”
we drove in silence
she would point at beautiful things and we would both nod
hid from the heat in a cafe
i sat across from a muddy homeless girl
i made a sandwich and passed it across the table to her
she reached into a plastic container and removed a mealworm,
wriggling between two grubby fingers,
and fed it to the baby bird that was riding around on her arm.
Then she took the sandwich and ate it
that evening i sat on the highway ramp in blinding orange light
rocking new sunglasses that were given to me
(i had a picture but i lost it, and i gave away the shades to someone who needed them more than me)
and then a pickup pulled over, they had me hop in the back
propped up my bag and leaned back against it,
stretched my legs out as we picked up speed, pulled onto the freeway,
wind raged, warm sun-baked wind all over me and colors and light
strummed ukulele at 70 miles an hour in the back of the pickup truck
drove through sunset scents of fresh hay and mint and apple orchards and cows and lakes,
zooming along with the sky and sunset clouds,
this is why i live this way, it was one of those moments
where if i died that second
i would be completely at peace

September

The mountains have taught me things

Last night wind picked up late and woke me with groans through the canyon

Spits of rain on my pitter pattered tarp

I huddled through the night and overslept past dawn 

Sunrise gentle, rabid storms, skies ablaze and starry peace

So pass the days

Unfolding landscapes and blurry handwriting

Sweet moonlit streetcorner melodies and roadside tears

Got into town late, slept outside, drank coffee in the morning, made cafe friends after noon

We passed around my guitar in the rainy alcove

I could have stayed there forever

Having cigarettes for dinner

Packed my bag,

Hitchhiked a thousand miles 

And I’m still Here

The strange thing is,

I could tell they will miss me

What did I even do? What did I say?

I was just me

How did I become this

Person who receives a typewritten poem upon my departure?

Idaho Falls actually has falls

I feel more honest here

Unzipped my guitar case to play an honest song for the blue sunset river

Found the neck snapped in two

I asked the woman outside the library,

So, what do you do?

She said she was on disability.

I said, so, what do you do?

She started to say something and then frowned.

The girl who kicked me down a pizza 

And asked if i was happy

Fuck yeah that shit is tasty

I sit on a bench in the shadows beside a gnarled mother tree

Watch them all pass by

I’ve never met that girl, but I know one thing about her

She will die

And there will be people at her funeral but now she is

Young and beautiful and ignorant and I am 

Young and beautiful and ignorant and the Utah rains taught me about acceptance when they came on my face without warning

That’s what she said

In Idaho attempted suicide is punishable by a $200 fine

The railroad tracks run above the river rapids

Silver afternoon thunderstorm freight train whistles remind me that I won’t stay here long

I saw a toddler playing in the rain outside the library

Come on September, let’s go inside, her mother called from beneath the overhang.

She stomped in pooling rainwater with unstable legs, mouth slightly open, arms flailing to touch the splashes

September! Come on, we need to go in! Her mother kept saying.

September totally ignored her, on all fours now, rain streaming down, eyes wide with her hands buried in the puddles