Riverbed (repost after accidental deletion)
The way you threw your Yuengling into the river hurt me. Truly.
And the trees, they are losing the awesome radiance they carried all afternoon. The stones are becoming sad, showing their age. And I can't see you anymore, only a gray approximation. But in this dusk light your shoulders are so great you could be a soldier, or maybe a whole army.
I stop, I crouch down, and holding up the hem of my skirt with one hand, I refill my water bottle with river water.
You say "You're not going to drink that are you?"
"And what if I did?"
"Then I won't kiss you."
I smile. I shrug. You turn around and we continue on.
You say "Thank you, by the way, for letting me jabber on about my mother for so god damn long."
"She's a funny woman" I say.
Now the river is flowing with us, but it's getting dark. How long did we stay in that cave? It wasn't a cave, it was barely a hollow. It just felt deep. It was a cave.
You say "Yeah, funny psycho. Christ it's been a wonderful day."
You with your shaggy hair, and your sandals, like Christ, lead me down the river, from rock to rock. I follow you, a dim little girl.
Your dim little girl?
You stop and say "Look at the moon."
I do. It's full. It's ghost white. Plasmodial slime mold. Myxomycota. "It's winking at you" I say.
You start to walk again, and I follow. You say "You know how when you look right at a star it disappears?"
"Yes," I say, "The center of your retina contains cones, which have a higher intensity threshold than rods, which make up your periphery."
"Yeah, well, when I was kid, I used to think that when I looked at a star, it really did wink at me."
"Hmm," I say, the stars wink at my boy. At the boy, I correct myself. And now here's the tricky part, the part where there aren't enough rocks. When we came here going the other way, we had to jump. It's not as bad coming back.
Your face aplomb, you take a large step, extending your leg outward to the distant stone. It touches, and your center of gravity is caught in the middle. For a second, you are vulnerable. Then you push hard with your back leg, falling purposefully forward, bending low, and securing your balance with your hands. The way the entire length of your body folds inward, you are an insect. We are mantises, crawling on these rocks.
And then you're looking at me, holding your hand out so that I might take it. And I do. I also extend my leg, my skirt spreading open like a Chinese fan, it's my turn to be vulnerable. You pull, I push, you catch me, I kiss you. But you don't look so happy, and we don't say anything.
Not until we get back to the car, and you drive me home, talking about Marx again. What does Marx have to say about us. Where did the moon go? Why do the stars wink at you? Rods and cones. What kind of man is this, talking to me about Marx? He holds the wheel in one fist.
I cross my arms beneath my breasts. You turn the air conditioning down. I look down at the souvenir in my lap. I watch how the water reacts to your accelerations, and your turns. The water collects on one side, and then we stabilize, and it bounces back and forth. I know what I'm going to do with this bottle, I'm going to take it to the lab and measure the oxygen saturation level of the river water. If it's fair, if it can sustain large fish, if it's, lets say, greater than 6.0 milligrams per a liter, you love me. If not, no big deal, because you're really just a funny man, a man who litters.
And the trees, they are losing the awesome radiance they carried all afternoon. The stones are becoming sad, showing their age. And I can't see you anymore, only a gray approximation. But in this dusk light your shoulders are so great you could be a soldier, or maybe a whole army.
I stop, I crouch down, and holding up the hem of my skirt with one hand, I refill my water bottle with river water.
You say "You're not going to drink that are you?"
"And what if I did?"
"Then I won't kiss you."
I smile. I shrug. You turn around and we continue on.
You say "Thank you, by the way, for letting me jabber on about my mother for so god damn long."
"She's a funny woman" I say.
Now the river is flowing with us, but it's getting dark. How long did we stay in that cave? It wasn't a cave, it was barely a hollow. It just felt deep. It was a cave.
You say "Yeah, funny psycho. Christ it's been a wonderful day."
You with your shaggy hair, and your sandals, like Christ, lead me down the river, from rock to rock. I follow you, a dim little girl.
Your dim little girl?
You stop and say "Look at the moon."
I do. It's full. It's ghost white. Plasmodial slime mold. Myxomycota. "It's winking at you" I say.
You start to walk again, and I follow. You say "You know how when you look right at a star it disappears?"
"Yes," I say, "The center of your retina contains cones, which have a higher intensity threshold than rods, which make up your periphery."
"Yeah, well, when I was kid, I used to think that when I looked at a star, it really did wink at me."
"Hmm," I say, the stars wink at my boy. At the boy, I correct myself. And now here's the tricky part, the part where there aren't enough rocks. When we came here going the other way, we had to jump. It's not as bad coming back.
Your face aplomb, you take a large step, extending your leg outward to the distant stone. It touches, and your center of gravity is caught in the middle. For a second, you are vulnerable. Then you push hard with your back leg, falling purposefully forward, bending low, and securing your balance with your hands. The way the entire length of your body folds inward, you are an insect. We are mantises, crawling on these rocks.
And then you're looking at me, holding your hand out so that I might take it. And I do. I also extend my leg, my skirt spreading open like a Chinese fan, it's my turn to be vulnerable. You pull, I push, you catch me, I kiss you. But you don't look so happy, and we don't say anything.
Not until we get back to the car, and you drive me home, talking about Marx again. What does Marx have to say about us. Where did the moon go? Why do the stars wink at you? Rods and cones. What kind of man is this, talking to me about Marx? He holds the wheel in one fist.
I cross my arms beneath my breasts. You turn the air conditioning down. I look down at the souvenir in my lap. I watch how the water reacts to your accelerations, and your turns. The water collects on one side, and then we stabilize, and it bounces back and forth. I know what I'm going to do with this bottle, I'm going to take it to the lab and measure the oxygen saturation level of the river water. If it's fair, if it can sustain large fish, if it's, lets say, greater than 6.0 milligrams per a liter, you love me. If not, no big deal, because you're really just a funny man, a man who litters.