lucky us
We plunged zombie armed into the fabric of night, a homogenized, untouchable, lightless velvet that cloaked the pines. We groped through the darkness for a spot to pee with fingers extended ready to touch god, or be obliterated against blackjack trunks. On the way back we took cautious steps until we jammed our digits into steel and slid our hands along the truck’s curves to find the door handle and go back to sleep.
A last look at the sky out the window revealed ponderosa silhouettes, pine shaped off-black cut outs in the stars. So many stars. None of them ours.
Our sun is a black pinhole compared to the biggest and brightest stars, but it’s our star and it was rising soon. And the Grand Canyon is a ditch carved by time and weather, but it’s our ditch, and watching the one rise over the other is a site we feel lucky to see. So we drove out of the forest in twilight to catch the dawn properly, from the South Rim of the canyon.
After the South Rim ritual our pilgrimage took us to another ditch. An overlooked feat of civil engineering. A megalith beneath the street. Alba libellorum—an interpretive site. For some it’s a wayward home or heroin den. For others, a bordello, prophet’s tablet, or canvas. For us, a skatepark, shrine to the carve, where we paid homage for the rest of the morning.
