I’m painfully familiar; it’s why I had to go. We both believed in dreaming, but truth is the whole show. Aren’t you exhausted by entitlement, tired of the taking? How burdensome that crown must feel when you have everything. Aren’t you sick of the old stories? Unused muscles are so weak. How tedious the torment, absent adversity. No one really wants to leave you suffering all on your own. It’s just the nature of your burden when you make that place your home.

I like wide-open spaces but for sure the desert wears me. The Rio Grande is truly everything it’s cracked up to be. To watch the stars in the desert you can look straight ahead. When finally I sought shade, I found dust storms instead. I been shivering and smoking and driving and crying. Laughing aloud at a mouse and then whining. Back in Colorado I’m shoveling Portland cement. If I can’t sit around outside Imma post up where I rent. Did he know you’d dance when he played that song? Did I tell you I got to see a roadrunner run? Gladly unpacking now I’m feeling satisfied. I still perseverate some but I’m straightened out inside.

The night didn’t go as smoothly as we’d hoped. Morning arrived in shades of grey and then the wind picked up. The mouse is suffering in the trap. There’s no campsite that works. Your server didn’t greet you, just demanded your order. Then the radio started playing a familiar, beloved song. There’s nothing for the madness, because kid, the road is long.

I told you all along but I told you so don’t fit. The desert isn’t welcoming if you just want to sit. Badgers bustle much like skunks but got a lot more heft. I’m gonna have this to myself I’ll share with you what’s left. This arid expanse once spent millennia under the sea. Whats been working well for you just doesn’t jive with me.

After a standard exchange of greetings with an old man hiking past the spot I’d chosen to sit along the Chisos Basin trail, I thought to ask how his day was going. “Oh, I’m okay,” he said with a twinkle. “I could be at home in bed right now.”

I saw it, yelled, and honked, but the junco wouldn’t leave the middle of that snowy road. My single lane was barely cleared. Even though I wanted to swerve, it was that little idiot or me. Maybe it was injured? I attempted to go over it—not run it over—but predictably this small birdbrain roused at the last second, only to be met directly by the car grill. I heard it. All at 70MPH. And it wasn’t the first thing I’d contributed to the death of that day.

I continued on, praying then, and more often after that.

A few days later I was walking around my car when I saw the junco’s little body tucked in not quite horrifically; at least it had died immediately. I yelled again then, the other death too still fresh. Grief rose out of my gut into frustrated, helpless sounds. There was nothing to do but apologize as I gently released the bird from its prolonged state of sudden end, feeling the tiny bones immediately lose all tension in my hands. So soft, so fragile; the junco collapsed into me like I could care for it. I felt the depth of my incompetence at caring for all things weaker.

Gently, thoughtfully, and in a plastic bag, I brought the feathered, bloody corpse with me to bury in my friend’s back yard. I whispered to it as if a sleeping baby, “Little bird, I’m sorry” among other things. At my friend’s house in a snowy canyon holding my small spade, I wondered if the dirt was frozen. Could I appreciate further penance? I turned toward the trees. The ground under the pines opened easily in dark intimacy, layers upon layers of soft loam inviting. Death is everywhere beneath the topsoil, the branches above me seemed to say, waving in the winter wind, Welcome. Still whispering to my victim, I allowed myself to envision the bird resting in peace. Lying there in its final place, my junco let me grieve.

He said “Constantly talking isn’t necessarily communicating”; the world never forgot. Now she learns from her own silence. You might give it a shot. Youth stinks of self-absorption. Age runs arrogant. They’ll take more than their portion, then wonder why its spent. I got nothing but defensive plays, what’s left is all a game. They hadn’t known each other long when he used her old nickname. Snow dusts throughout the desert, c’est une pâtisserie. I know how to use the hurt, don’t worry about me.

The flicker fluffed herself up to stay all day. Snacking then resting, never flying away. I wonder about how you lie to yourself. Habits on habits all giving us hell. He’s never there though we know he tries. Sand in the concrete, shit gathering flies. I alone can be blamed for my sentiments. She said she heard but that’s not what I meant. Doves come and go with soft sweet coos. Every path is yours, just choose.

I don’t know how long I watched the icicles grow. A millimeter at least. Half a year passed with nail polished toes, how long can they be flecked green. You got duped by a pretense it wasn’t on you. Sun shining on snow can be blinding. The jays scream and hop along the bare branches. She said she likes when she finds things. They waited a while to come together, maybe it’s just for the kids. I wanted to be what they wanted from me, but I’m not and that’s all there is.

Orange rind balanced on the edge of a coupe. I admire them both, as one and as two. Listening to the sizzle of snow falling on fire. Just cuz you’re changing don’t make you a liar. History adds up and ours is sweet fodder. But for this or that we might not have bothered. What good is potential if there ain’t an intent. Love’s never enough, let’s cash in on time spent.

We started the year with a two year old’s toast. I been asking for less but they just do the most. She’s got a penchant for romance instead of the truth. One can’t help but forgive the mistakes caused by youth. Does he take all those ghosts where ever he goes? If we’re storytelling, you’re writing the prose. The kid sings himself softly awake in his crib. We need similar wonder in order to live.

They all planned to rise early for the first chair lift. We both stayed at the bar til the end of her shift. Nothing like chain smoking to make your throat numb. Distractions don’t serve if you can see down the gun. We believe in free will, except when we don’t. It’s not that I can’t, I’m saying I won’t.

Thin ink, huge script: “I’ve got 99 problems and white heteronormative patriarchy is ALL OF THEM”

Underneath, also in pen, in almost normal-sized handwriting: “damn girl u right”

Bold ink and bigger composition, still smaller than the first: “I feel your pain. SUBVERT + RISE ABOVE.”

Mom woke from her hotel bed at 4AM to say goodbye. 7:30 now and a group of white boys at BWI are drinking oversized beers while the important types bluster into their phones.

I watch a man yell across the food court in greeting, “Hey, I was about to call you! I left you a message yesterday.” He’s delighted. I follow his gaze to the other party and find her beaming at him across the busy tables. I wonder at the circumstances of being in an airport and bumping into someone for whom you’d just left a message.

There are adult bros holding court on their way to snowy mountains. I move away from them because I’d prefer to overhear other voices. I am rewarded immediately by jolly airport staff joking and laughing with each other. If there’s anything I miss about city living it’s the boisterous, startling laughs.

I have to lean over to futz in my bag on the floor in front of me. As I sit up from this I find myself looking directly into a just-risen sun as it blasts between rafters in the airport ceiling. Immediately dazzled, I glance away quickly only to discover that nowhere else was touched by those sharp rays of dawn. Not my body, not any of the bodies around me, not even the floor. Only my own insignificant noggin had been startled and graced by the newborn day. And only in that brief moment, for even as I registered the blinding beauty of it all, the sun moved on.

Later as I people watch, the sneaky rays shine again into a small slice of the teeming departures scene. They grace the head of a very important person who has stopped to check his phone in the middle of the terminal bustle. He is haloed and golden for his own moment, radiant even as he forces traffic to stream around him. Hallowed inconvenience.

Listening to her snoring is like watching the stars. You know what to expect in hotel bars. He finished the book so I could carry it on. I probably won’t write you, but I will dance to our song. Across from her bed I don’t want to sleep. I break our hearts again, and again, when I leave.