How To Leave Willow Creek

As I raced the setting summer sun, weaving along a treacherous mountain path through weathered truss bridges and worn asphalt corners that beckoned me to take a fateful meeting with the waters of Lethe, She, like the Klamath that wound beside the path home, offered me only ephemeral eyefuls of her vast and apathetic beauty.

It didn't matter how fast the treads of my tires pulled me back north. She had been winning all along. The last rays of July were kissing the white knuckles of my shaking hands and I was too late to feel Her heat warm my tired bones. As swiftly She had risen, She had gone to sleep beyond the crashing hum of the river valley.

Without Her guidance, I scoured the dead zones of the night, imprudently pursuing a sense of safety that I had not longed for since the last time I found myself gripping the edges of a frame that held past and distant lives nor known since the first time I lost myself to my best friend, wrapped in a wool blanket in the back of an old Dodge parked under the stars.

When the 96 finally met the bright lights of the 5, after the Klamath opened its mouth to pour its body into lands unhallowed and unmoved by her power and motion, a pernicious laugh relieved itself from the claustrophobic cavity that once held nascent notions of love, and with one fatal breath, reminded my hopeful heart that my defiance against the doom of night had to be buried alive alongside the summer sun.