augmont

[augmont]

Every essence has its roots,

where pathways give way to notice.

My jagged memory fails a lot

all the time.

I thought I put a chapstick in the

front of the knapsack—

I thought I succeeded.

I think a lot all the time.

A blue jay dives in the front yard,

and I consider the ways the tree

might welcome it home.

I reflect from a sill. Soil

and salt crisscross the

sunken valley.

I forgot about the mail.

I forgot more than a few letters,

maybe the whole alphabet—

I trace every hey, watch the bees

dip into the tulips, moving my body

down the stoop and toward the

wide sea.

The blue jay has left.

I close my eyes a lot, all the time.

The path lays itself before me,

oaks and knolls and stones

settling on the horizon.

[augmont]

Room 8349 / Last Donut of the Night (Leaving Rockland County, New York & Knox County, Ohio)

I gave an Ecuadorian boy Named Alexis a Chilean man, that great poet. He gave me a number, his very own, typing Israel Church into my phone.

Long shadows on this rural and brutal Campus where I once stumbled and roamed, that hopeless boy. He had no feeling, limbs not known, hands and walls fully fused to a blank tone.

Sleepy double-header in Saint Louis Through which I sweat, drenched, wept, ravenous, that long sleep. He stayed up all night long, she drove, he rode alone, the first Miata in town, one engine groan.

Form is tough and I don’t want to be alone.

Dead cat on the county line and Mohican boys sailing the pickup to the river head, a yacht-long S-class leaves the dollar store and what could it ever reach out here?

Drive Thru Liquor, lakeside long and Let’s Turn America(s) Back to God, fuck you, but, do your thing and Liberty Steel  a permanent freedom I won’t relent.

Maple Grove Coal and Stove and Apostolic Pentecostal, bathe me in liquor at the lake, the hill, or the river head. Cut down the trees and scorch the land and turn your luxury wide, go ahead and scourge the mass(es).

But, you could never kill me and you could never kill this.

The crickets settled in the long grass. We split the remaining Entenmann’s and the night, like the beat, faded into the county sky.

Your form and mine. A new tone. Nine lives, nine lives, and nine lives three times. I miss the hill and those stars. I missed the river, once, too.

Ladies and gentlemen, It's that time at The Regal,

It’s time for a new form. It’s time to build home.

[augmont]

Last Exit Before the Bridge

Skipping town when the clock turns over, a woman careens through bends and gorges when no one else is around. She finds it easiest to tear the country when the odometer is rattling, when the filling stations are self-service, when the universe is all around. Passing through the Delaware Water Gap, the dry heat of early autumn groans in the nooks of the full moon. She rounds a steep corner and she kicks the clutch, the windshield annihilating anything in the way. At the drop of a bluff, the moonlight evaporates from the river. A fire scales the mountainside across the water and its ascension silences the world. The woman slows. A charred doe drifts around the bank.

She kills her headlights and she takes the next exit.

2024 #6

[augmont]

Homer, Ohio

My dear friend left town today. I will watch his dog for a month. He is headed to the island. My ribs are throbbing. One time, he drove us to the airport in my car. Mighty Healthy played through a few small towns. I had too much cough syrup the night before. Two nights before that, too. My dear friend saw my pale face. He did not let me take the wheel. I read Hersey’s Hiroshima at the gate. I cannot remember what he read, and I am ashamed, but I recall watching him watch the planes come and go. My dear friend left town today. My face is melting. I will scoop up my eyes, and I will watch him for the rest of my life.

2024 #5

[augmont]

Writing in the Margins of an Elizabeth Bishop Poem After a Gram of Cocaine and a Fifth of Tequila

The heart is a faulty circuit Round and round, Lightning and bass and blood clots. Blow both ear drums to the brain Convince the world what you think, that you think,  Superficial intellect and desperate breathing. A lifetime wheelchair or a lifelong muzzle The starlight is colder than the wind, The lord’s present is as dead as  the sky’s future and you’ll have exactly nothing to do with it, with any of it. 

The heart trembles and drips too fast Hurricanes and brass and breastplates, Round and round and round,  the heart is a family circuit, a closed bond.

2024 #4

[augmont]

Legacy

Reading Milton on my phone in the lot of the bagel place and night hasn’t yet turned to dawn, self-banishment and I have no lord, heaven hides nothing from my view, the working men gather at the door and an Open sign lights the morn. I wander to the register and I want sustenance, a sandwich, I am dizzy but I am not lost, a baker lifts a peel and the world spins to view.

Reading the flock, their worldlines, the sky, the river kicks both ways, the loyal angels hoist the sun on high, an addendum of burnt rubber and streets left behind,  this village of tides, of secrets, of recipes, of shame, of blood and of water, I drive aside. I think of those created before and all that were cast away, all those passed on by.

2024 #3

[augmont]

Simple & Insurmountable

Galaxies extol. At least I read that Somewhere, somewhere close To the stars or To the dirt, somewhere close To my creation.

2024 #2

[augmont]

Sea, Air, and Land

High altitude storm clouds

and hammers, hammers abound,

a thunderclap rings through my skull

and I might be having, having a stroke.

A weathered man paces Cerrillos

and he longs, longs for change,

his sign reads Navy Seal Combat Vet

and I might be tortured, tortured with doubt.

I ask him what BUDS stands for

and he blurts, blurts I dont got any,

he says my best friend died in Iraq

and I might be turning, turning pale gray.

Instead of sinking in the mountain’s shadow

or running, flying into the rainstorm,

I offer him two pounds of chicken wings

and I might find love, love again.

2024 #1

[augmont]

Neruda and His Questions, or Avril 14th

Amapola, funeral homes along Mulberry. A skip and a hop across the fabric of One end to another, sidewalk to street light, Restricted parking and throngs of flowers. Starlings murmur along a tree branch. What gives you the right to fool my eyes, Making them see you everywhere?

Neruda asked before his death, En qué ventana me quedé Mirando el tiempo sepultado? Slow keys and long strings line The procession of spring, an adagio Toward Golgotha. A boy in black garment Leans from a broken window,  Breathing nails and rubble.

I watch him from the sidewalk. I play a trick on his eyes, fooling them, Making them see me, staring back into My own. The boy in black blinks slowly, The house crumbles, all deeply and dead, Like the notes of a well-known song  Played in their reverse order.

[augmont]

If you think the wind

Sounds further off, it's not because it's dying;

You're further under in the snow—that's all—

And feel it less.

—Robert Frost, "Snow," 1916

At night sadness slips to sleep

Like a slalom, heavy legs

Holding loose and slack to

Crystal sand. Winding through a

Hill dream and you are at the top,

Further off, undead, I see you again.

I feel you less. Heavy legs,

The sand melts and freezes again.

A mess is worth the hurt when

A silent funeral does not sing.

Bright white and peaks shrouded,

The wind wanders at night, whistles a tune

Like a climber looking for a cliff—

An avalanche is worth the burial when

The view dreams and dreams and dreams,

The sound goes and comes and sings.

[augmont]

Delilah

It is the dusk of an October evening. Delilah is chasing after a metropolitan bus just south of Manchester’s city centre. In the midst of her raw routine, in the midst of a fresh start in a new country, Delilah spontaneously stepped off at the Curry Mile stop and entered a hookah bar. She found a table, patted down her pockets, and her face turned pale.

She hurried out while the host asked about her preferred shisha. Now, the bus is well gone, as are her wallet and her visa, and she is sobbing on a curb half a mile down the road. She must have thought that the throng watched in pity. The throng continues on their way.

Each day at the end of the summer, Delilah spent the morning preparing and packing. Once she finished her checklist, she spent the rest of her waking hours with her girlfriend. Her name was Ginny. Ginny had deep-set green eyes and short black hair and a great sense of humor. Delilah was the least bit funny, but she knew how to laugh.

Delilah also had brown eyes and long blond hair and she always thought herself pretty plain. But Ginny would say Delilah had what she called a little strangeness, sometimes, in the pensive woman. She would also say that is what she loved about Delilah. So, for each day at the end of the summer, they would forget about the calendar and focus on the hours. They did their best to ignore the departure date until it slammed at Delilah’s front door.

On the day of Delilah’s flight to England, there was a street fair in the couple's town, which rested on the western side of the river. Vendors and food carts and antiques and balloons lined the village streets, and on that muggy but vivid afternoon, the throng was deep and wide. Delilah and Ginny weaved their way through the crowd, from downtown and all the way up Broadway, where Delilah bought a soda for Ginny. On the way they people-watched and narrated their interiority and laughed all the while. Once they reached the northern boundary of the fair they turned around and meandered back much the same.

When Delilah and Ginny reached the foremost artery of the fair, the throng squeezed and the summer sun beated bright. A bossanova band banged against their eardrums and they could not hear a thing. Their hands touched; the pressure of the crowd forced her bosom against her shoulder; they stood, face to face, staring into each other's eyes. With only a few hours left, tears welled in Delilah’s eyes and Ginny stroked her cheek. After a moment, the two pushed out of the mass and continued downtown.

The hour of the red-eye flight drew nearer and the couple started to make their way toward the parked car. It sat along the river road, a rolling hill below the festivities. When they reached the downslope, Delilah told Ginny to wait at the top. She wanted to capture the final image of her girlfriend on film, hoping the cellulose would absorb every single sense and scent that hung suspended in the summer air at that very moment.

When Delilah finally reached the bottom of the hill, she waved Ginny down. Delilah pulled the camera from her bag and framed Ginny in the viewfinder. Ginny laughed and shook her head as she strode forward. The color radiated from her eyes and Delilah found the powder blue backdrop. Then she clicked the shutter. It was a vision of her girlfriend's face, through the aperture, smiling on her, and gone in a moment.

Delilah did not have time to develop the roll before, or after, her flight.

A few mornings after losing her wallet, Delilah is laying in bed and she is scrolling through her phone. She knows Ginny is still asleep because of the time difference but that does not stop her from sending her girlfriend messages. However, since arriving to her new home, Delilah has noticed that Ginny’s responses have been fewer and more truncated. As the sideways rain pitters and patters against the bay window above her headboard Delilah taps away at the back-and-forth, analyzing and scrutinizing and justifying all the while. It is perilous to make a chasm in human affections; not that they gape so long and wide—but so quickly close again.

Delilah then decides to check Ginny’s Instagram feed. When she reaches her page, Delilah finds no new information. The last post is a short and sweet goodbye to Delilah and the subject has already poured over the comment section more times than she is comfortable admitting. With a bottomless and burning anxiety, she finds herself curious to know the progress of matters at home, but there is nothing for Delilah in that regard. The rain continues to fall and Delilah closes her eyes.

A week later, Delilah receives a call from the bus depot and finds out that somebody turned her wallet over to the transportation authority. In an ecstatic and overflowing moment, she barrages Ginny with texts and rushes for the next bus. On the way to the corner from her apartment, she gathers courage to pause and look homeward, to the western sky, but is perplexed with a sense of change about the familiar edifice. The atmosphere is no longer powder blue but faded denim, like the hymns of Coltrane or Redding. When, after a separation of months or years, we again see some image with which we were friends of old, the contrast between our imperfect reminiscences and the reality becomes clear, but only for the moment. Delilah tries her hardest to recall that last summer afternoon, but the arriving bus and the darkened sky above carry her away.

Once Delilah pays for her ticket in cash she finds a seat at the front and realizes she forgot her headphones at the apartment. In the noisy silence of the cabin Delilah pulls out her phone to see if Ginny replied to her jubilant relief. However, the only notification that appears on her home screen is her Daily Horoscope, and Delilah cannot control her frown. She stuffs her phone into her pocket and turns toward the window, looking over the winding and ancient road leading south. Delilah fidgets and agonizes and watches her reflection against the glass. The lonely woman feels a legion of eyes against the back of her head.

Little knowest thou thine own insignificance in this great world. No mortal eye has traced thee, among a thousand such atoms of mortality.

A couple of months into the winter, Delilah leaves the Manchester Central Library and heads north toward the main shopping mall. She is pacing along the tram tracks to avoid the bustle when she notices someone in the throng that looks, from behind, exactly like Ginny. Although they have not spoken in many weeks, and although she knows Ginny could not possibly be in northwest England, her strides nonetheless lengthen and she pivots for the sidewalk. The latent feelings of years break out.

Delilah forces her way through the pack until she reaches the red fleece and the short black hair. The river of unknown faces pushes them together and Delilah stares right into her target’s eyes. However they are black and bulging and busy and Delilah stops in her tracks. She lets the rush of the people wash over her. She was in the bustle of the city, as of old, but the crowd swept by and saw her not. Tears roll down Delilah’s cheeks and there is no one there to brush them away.

Delilah looks up when she feels a drop of rain hit her forehead. The bleached sky is enormous and it has no direction. I should go home, she says to herself, something she has been saying to herself for many months.

Glimpses of the truth indeed come, but only for the moment.

It is a gusty night of spring, and Delilah pulls her camera from its travel case to clean it. She is going to London in a few days and she has not used it since the summer. While Delilah sits on the floor and wipes the grime from the lens and the rewind crank and the viewfinder she realizes that she never removed the last roll of film she used. Delilah nervously pulls the back compartment open and finds a note folded tightly against the door. After blowing the dust away, she unfolds the note and reads it aloud.

Would Time but await the close of our favorite follies, we should be young women, all of us, and till Doomsday. –G

Delilah searches for a nearby photoworks shop on her phone and Delilah bowls over, mourning for everything that was neglected and everything that was lost. Then, she sits up and moves toward the bay window, looking for the constellations braided across the western sky.

“Delilah” was inspired by and borrows many lines (which are italicized) from “Wakefield,” a short story found in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales, a collection first published in 1837.

[augmont]

The Days, After Emerson

Bread, kingdoms, stars, or sky that holds them all.

Looking upward,

Only night time

or a hole a familiar foot wide

could cast this dense shadow.

The days,

Spent,

wasted, fulfilled, prayed and tossed aside

could only flood back into view

in this dense shadow.

They reach their hands,

Their tools, their tiring efforts, their best attempts

down the boundless well,

but my mind desires only your bread

my heart only your vast kingdoms

my eyes only your burning stars

And I neglect reaching upward,

toward the sky that holds them all.

This dense shadow, in it I rested

When I remembered I came here alone

I closed my senses, and I

Turned and departed silent. I, too late,

Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

[augmont]

Sweet When the Lost Arrive

For man, beast, mute, the small and great,

And prostrate dust to dust.

—Christopher Smart, "A Song to David," 1763

There were three generations for my twenty-three. Now there are only two.

Vito and I went to the ledge with a twelve pack and a BB gun, we slipped down the footpath like we always do, like we always did, clearing the last of the brush before the river revealed itself. The trees swayed on the bruised face of the mountain, those trees resilient to the forces that wear their earthly counterparts, those trees that tangle their roots in generational stone, stone fused there long before the hard plastic chair and the metal one that once stood in its place. Neither of us took the chair, none of us ever do, because we leave it open for things never to return. After finishing the case, after blitzing tin cans with copper slugs, we descended to the small hills without much of a word, we took the car home, and we didn’t look back at the great mountain, because we knew we would be back.

My mother, facedown, said it feels more and more like the end. My father has been saying that for my whole life. Dust to dust, as it goes.

[augmont]

The Place He Has Found is Also of His Own Choosing.

The game is so easy if you pick up the right positions. By move one you better be halfway to move three. It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.

Shut up. Shut the fuck up. I'm gonna try again.

Chaos is the essence of this universe and I don’t know if there’s much more to be said. I used to think about all of the betting odds for every passing moment, which way it would fall or gyrate and sometimes I would be right but most of the time I had no idea what I was doing.

When I wanted to be an astronaut I knew I was not smart enough. When I wanted to be a pilot I knew I could not see well enough. When I wanted to be a politician I knew I was not sly enough and when I wanted to be your brother I knew I was not good enough.

When I wanted to be a writer I never looked back and something is still left uncovered. I am raging enough but I just don’t have the words.

I will soon. I’ll call back soon.

He pressed the seventh digit and he hung up the phone. Wads of note paper were scattered across the floor and a legal pad was blown over the ottoman. It must have taken him seventeen or twenty tries to write a decent message. He didn’t even use it.

Below his apartment down the silent crest of the hill a street sweeper creaked towards the river. It rolled with the cracks in the road and the laden halogens from the other side of the waterway streaked a lowly orange across its widest expanse. The window grumbled as the sweeper appeared and faded between leaning streetlights.

Once the air fell silent he pulled a cigarette from their father’s stainless steel case, once on Grand Tours both through war and love, once an instant reminder of his brother, what was once his smell and smile and his spirit, once lit, ascended to the peeling ceiling, once as ceaseless as the Celeste that still holds his head.

On the twenty-first attempt he decided to go purple-heavy. With a new pen he wrote four stanzas and he took four deep breaths for his brother. Across the river, to the east, a burning amber reared its new crown from beneath the Russian Violet rubble. Those lost below, their constellations, were extinguished with each stroke.

King for a king, king for a day, you saw the world whole

But your reign was short, the rain was short, taken was a toll

You passed on the sixth’s evening and I dreamt of you

Above the hilltop’s canopy, your plunge damned a soul

You stood above the river and your hand covered brow

The sails and the barges and the estates aside all a row

I changed the signal light from tangerine to cherry

Moving from trunk to branch I never wondered how

But as I worked the car and focused next on the door

You thought it wise to miss my eyes and take your risk further, more,

You stepped across limb, open to the mountain’s embrace

And I watched you fall like a bomber's haul to the floor

In my dream you slammed the ground in which you forever lie

Nearly enough for your shuttered eyes to open just once more

And you agonized to me, Mother told us not to cry

But I rouse myself with each sun and I am not so sure.

[augmont]

Paid Programming

If it were death before dishonor I would have expired by cohorts in the hundreds already. If it were dishonor before death I would still have a chance. But it is only a blank stare at the mirrored dome above my head, which rests on something far from a pillow, that has a final look at my existence. The mattress lays on the tiled floor like I only paid my security deposit on this dirt apartment a few minutes ago. But no dirt apartment has tiled floors. Unless you just moved into an abandoned school. Or you just won a free stay at the hospital. I wish I could have fifteen more of those tranquilizer shots. Hedonism at its finest. Maybe all at once, maybe minutes apart in each artery lining my upper thigh. I hope they give me a few extra pills after dinner tonight. So I can eat in peace, with the local news running its course, before I do mine.

If you’re very lucky you get a room with a view of the sunrise. If you’re just lucky you get a room with a view of the graveyard. I finished counting every headstone before my luck got me moved to a room with no windows at all. It was about as big as a closet where, you know, you store things you’d rather ignore. Or tame. Or both. The three-inch metal door didn’t even have a window. I couldn’t even count the nurses who walked by my humble hole.

So I counted the minutes and the seconds. It’s hard to count the hours and the days. With every passing second, when I was allowed out, I paced the ward in a precise pattern. Exit the hole. Walk to the doubled security doors which sit behind another locked pair. Follow the tiles in front and around the exit, reversing orientation towards the graveyard. Tip-toe the left side of the ward. Pass your old room once you reach the other half, where your clothes still sit half-folded. The strings are removed from the hoods of your sweatshirts and all of your shoelaces are gone. Didn’t need them anyway. Continue past Mr. White Knight who won’t stop screaming about the impending race war. You’ve told him to fuck off enough times and it’s not like he even heard you the first go-around. Just close his door. Turn and walk the right side of the ward, around the adjacent corners. Pass the cafeteria. The local news paces on, like your sorry ass. Wave to Syd. Syd is playing some form of chess against no one. He seems to like that turtleneck you gave him. It was your father’s, so good. It does look strange on a different person, so even better. Keep your speed, and your count, towards the other twin set of quadruple seals. Once you turn around one final time, and walk across the ward, you’ll be home.

Syd was there for 60 days already when the red carpet was laid out for my arrival. The legal limit is 40. They didn’t let him grab his tanakh, only his white linens. By day 20, he lost his only dry cleaning business. By day 40, he lost his only son. By day 60, he lost his only remaining hope, but he met me. Maybe I could help.

He hated the nurses with sincere regard. And, to be fair, he had good reason. The ward was understaffed and those who ground themselves towards nothing to take post, day after day, had little left to offer in terms of grace. They were abusive and impatient. When they were happy, they were headed home and we were not. When they laughed, they were present and our minds were not. When they talked, it was about this god-forsaken hospital, it was about these god-forsaken deadeyes, it was about this god-forsaken life.

But, most of all, Syd hated the doctor. And he made sure to tell me in my first minutes how much he hated the doctor. Syd said the doctor lived far away, in some grandiose castle, with guaranteed royalties and a disposition fit for a medieval juror. Syd said we were the doctor’s monkeys, to swing from the branches and to demonstrate our progress in learning the teacher’s demands. To beg for bananas, to beg for biscuits, to beg for bereavement. A loss of a burden for which we did not ask in the first place.

I gave Syd the turtleneck because my father did nothing while the police officers carted me off. I also gave it to him because it was white, so it matched his whittled wardrobe. It was my gift to a shell of a man in an act that was hollowly selfish. To have thought a replica racing shirt would rescue this apparition from the attic of atonement. All it did was make it look like he was suffocating even more. I had a different idea many, many, many minutes later.

I petitioned for Syd’s release. Using one of my two phone calls I got every some-odd minutes, I called the lawyer from the state. I had everyone in the ward, who could still open their eyes, sign some parchment paper I found in the dampened drawers that line the decaying book room. It also has a window. You can see the mountain’s bruised face from it. Blotched with snow where the rest did not plummet. Still all knowing. I also got the doctor to visit more often, which I thought would help Syd. But that small man who calls himself a professional only made Syd feel even smaller. After a certain few minutes, he stopped opening his eyes when they asked him why exactly he should be released this time.

Syd did not like the fact that my actions brought the doctor around more often. Another act of selfish sullenness. I knew this because he stopped waving back to me when I paced the right side of the ward. He still wore the turtleneck, but he turned it inside out. All the chess pieces were knocked over. White and black all over the place, with no piece in its proper, or even possible, position. The local news sounded like broken syllables from the mouth of an exiled crown. And each time I passed Syd I knew he had become one of those god-forsaken deadeyes. The monkey who fell from his tree and was to never climb it again.

The minute Syd left the hospital he did not look at anyone. The second Syd left the hospital he could not look at anyone. He had no one to see him. And he had no facilities to see. Syd was also lacking a functioning heart. It stopped working before he was able to catch his last sunrise from his room, which had the best window in the ward. They presumably took his body to the basement and left it there forever. Who the fuck even gives a fucking fuck? The lawyer from the state never came. The nurses laughed. The doctor ate. The local news moved to the next story. I paced. And I wept for my friend. But I am no one.

The day I left the hospital I stood in my room on the far side of the ward. The graveyard was buried in a beluga blanket. I couldn’t count the headstones, so I counted the cars. I counted the cars. I counted each car. The ones going north up the river and the ones headed south towards the city. There were always more cars going south towards the city. I thought this was confusing. I would have ran like hell.

When they finally let me through the gates of the ward the third floor of the hospital was quiet. I was in a garment of hysterical appearance, but whether it was funny or frantic, I could not tell. I took the staff elevator to the second floor with a garbage bag of clothing over my shoulder. A couple of doctors didn’t even seem to notice. Except one. But that one doctor was calculating some sort of deliverance for me again. I got out of the elevator.

With my garbage bag I made my way towards the chapel. It was a tiny sanctuary with no windows. The door was so small it seemed as though you were meant to dwell only on your knees within its walls. There were two rows of pews and each held one bible. There was a prayer book at the back and I asked someone downstairs to cremate Syd’s remains and bring them to his son’s resting place. To anyone upstairs, I asked for nothing.

At the front of the sanctuary laid on a mahogany table was a larger bible, opened to the Book of Ecclesiastes. I closed it. Hedonism at its finest. There was also a stained glass mosaic brushed in every register. It filtered light through only just, but in every feeling and in every syllable. It was a casement that designated every denomination in the domain. But that domain was to be left behind. I lashed the window with my fist until I could not feel it. I broke the hinges. When the glass fell to the floor, I let it sink into the skin of my knees, and I found the sharpest shard. I also found the femoral artery I had so been dreaming about in my upper thigh. Maybe it was just about time for paid programming to start.

[augmont]

Your Love

It doesn’t mean one to everything, just everything to one.

I always kiss each towel when I visit your cheaper than copper apartment

I don’t kiss the ones in use

They always hold each initial when I nudge the switch outside the door

They don’t need to say a word

I always think of how friendly you were when you passed the front desk

I don’t forget the passing headlights

Hatched with blinds, the same color as

Everything with the lights off

[augmont]

The Hike, Revisited

A country wind blew through a brigade of trees, of smiling birches and shy oaks, rustling them like a restless yet hushed crowd. A creek swished and spat in response. The surrounding mountaintops were motioning in silence, pointing down and towards the direction of the trail, and the afternoon light followed in parallel course.

Sam reached for the ground, first having checked both of his sides, and picked up a heaping rock and chucked it over an aging, frowning wall that once belonged to a farm. Even though Sam thought he had gotten away with unsanctioned mischief, so came Matt, our counselor, to put him off.

Sam shrugged, and then Sam smirked, and he proceeded to turn and snicker with the rest of our group. Matt shook his head, and returned to the front of the pack. The hike was to resume, through the farm, and no more rocks would be thrown. Or heaved. At all. No exceptions.

Between the trees, under tangled vines and over standing puddles, with views of the past’s labors and the present’s ruins, our group eventually arrived at the heart of the farm. We sat on an elevated bridge, overlooking overgrowth, considering corroded pipes and fallen stones and miles and miles of wooded land.

Matt, after a couple of tries, silenced our group. He counted us, head by head with his finger, and he seemed to ease up when he noticed all twelve of us had made it along the trail. Having delivered a fair warning about the land, makeshift boundaries, and a reiteration of the rock rule, Matt let our tiny universe take hold.

We shuffled our bodies rapidly, jumped to our feet, prepared for the exploration that was commencing, days prepared, prepared through all the seasons that could not, and would not, offer and afford chaotic serenity. ​

We fanned out, running across the overrun farmland, a tribe of boys returning to our primordial instincts, viewing the world in its barest sense, avoiding rusting fence pikes and broken cinder blocks, with rays of faint sunlight penetrating the canopy of deep green, every so often it tagging our small heads, the forest quiet and watching, with branches heavily guarding the time that was spent there during our summer, limbs and appendages holding secrets long locked away.

A few of us came upon a feeble stone structure, a sagging home of shattered sheetrock and dark, damp corners, with a lowly tunnel that stretched in the opposite direction, a passageway so silent it could be felt, and it was only begging us to discover, to dismantle, to disobey. We moved about, throwing rock and mineral down the crumbled chasm, absorbed in our own ruckus, all the while disregarding the rest of our known world. We were enveloped in a rampant joy spliced with a slick sense of wrongdoing. There was the witness of nobody that would reveal no tales, and there were disappearing stones that made no noise.

Sam paused, and he peered at the dirt. We could not tell his feelings, so we stood in meek silence. He stopped reaching for the ground, and he began to move away from the gallery of oblivion. There was an unmissable coldness dripping from the pitch black hall, and in all of the reaching rays of stubborn sun, in all of the ambiance of adjacent activities, there stood before us was precisely nothing.

Matt did not know of the tunnel. Or maybe he did. No one spoke of it when we rejoined the rest of the group, and no spoke of it for the rest of the summer. Sam only told us once that an entrance would appear in his dreams. He never stepped through it.