park [january23 22]

i remember it was night, late. i laid on my blue jersey bedsheets just barely sweating. id thought too much about what i'd been doing wrong and sleep was too far away. the Sound bloomed in my head, it urged me to get up and go, out of our brick and concrete cottage and into the open night.

i counted to 15 and sat up and swung out of bed. i laced my black boots over my bare feet and zipped my ragged black hoodie over my clammed skin and crawled out of my window.

it had rained hard that day and the stiff clay soil refused to soak up the wet. the whole block was a nasty swamp of bent straw and muck. i picked my way across our overgrown yard to the street. damp wheatgrass slipped over my shins like witch fingers. the Sound pointed me in the direction of the park. it wasnt far, a quarter mile up the the road, next to the cemetery. i splashed across the asphalt and hopped onto the sidewalk.

the street was quiet and my black shadow shrunk and faded long again as i walked past each lamp buzzing with warm green light.

i approached the cemetery where the last street lamp waited before the road twisted darkly away into the thin bracken forest. i passed the light and looked up to the sky. in the valley the stars come all the way out at night and the detail of their habitat becomes fully visible. the flat white on black of the 30 or so city stars becomes a deep roiling current of white over white over silver and hazy blue. the bruise of the galaxys pattern is flesh under the glow. thousands of millions together in a slow rotation, like looking deep through the sparkling silt of a slow river. i gazed, open and swaying like a lily. water had gotten in the hole in my left bootheel and begun to soak my foot.

i was hungry and i felt new sweat across my belly as i marched up the gently sloping street. the cemetery continued on my right, the red brick pump house next to the road held the same posture as the mausoleum at the center of the grounds. their walls leaned into my my gaze, daring me to hop the fence and tread their territory while the hour still belonged to them. i denied them, walking on and looking through the twisted metal fencing.

i surveyed the headstones. i wondered whos was the newest. who let themselves be taken by the dirt here. a car passed me from head on and i was blind. 2 pink green blossoms covered my vision as i strode on. i took a long blink and the black iron park gate jammed itself into my shoulder.

i recoiled stupidly and stepped into a jagged little whirl down the sidewalk. the sturdy pump house stood still, mocking my gangling motion. i halted myself with my feet planted wide and stable. i stood at the center of the arched gate of the park entry.

the Sound hummed contentedly as i looked out across the grounds. the park spread out at the bottom of the slope off the side of the road. it fanned out in a delta from the dozen concrete steps where i stood. tonight there was something different about it. i took my next step down the staircase, its sides sweeping out in imitation of the idea of grandness, reminiscence of a grand ballroom stair in a ancient mansion. wheat grew in the pebbly cracks.

usually, the park was a smallish run of grass with a looped path and benches. it ended where its green grass met the expanse of rock and brush and rubble that ran all the way out to the airstrip. a few hardy trees stood gnarled around the edges, guarding against the advance of the ruined field. tonight, though, i saw the whole thing was a mirror.

the rainwater from the day had fallen hard and had nowhere to go. so it pooled, and waited still, reflecting. i was momentarily lost in vertigo as the night sky gazed up to me. a perfect, unmoving recreation of the depthless starfield laid out below. i slowly descended the remaining steps to it. the final step was right there above the surface. i looked out across it to where the park and the floor of light ended at the stones and bushes. all enmeshed in the shining surface were little black blades of grass reaching through, up from the stars.

i did not touch it. i barely breathed. i could have slipped and fallen through

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