Way Out There

I moved into Dad's old cabin where you could hear the river rattling by a little out of tune but you couldn't spot it. Someone saw all this hot nothing and thought they knew how to listen. The ground was not lost for lack of better judgment the creek beyond my back door breathed. 

There was a kitchen with all the fixings of cast iron crusted over with cornmeal and egg whites. A note above the stove said I should boil orange peels and ginger to ward off the smell—crates of Pearl in the corner he used to drink them red-fisted. The first night I dreamt of stairs that lead into walls half hugging the walls glassy eyed veins swelled like whipcord. We shared the same cleft in our sweaty chin.

These floors were plastered with sandy footprints, wood shavings, and nasty old magazine covers. Crickets lived in the drain pipes and there was an outhouse over the hill half sunken into the earth with a hawk inscribing the air above not taunting but calling out for what I don't know. My dad always swung this steel band from his pocket with at least twenty keys all cutting into each other. There's something so enticing about a man with a whole lot of keys. He was a describer of life, a resident of where I was born though often a silent one. I had no intention of kissing off the dust but something about a life undone. His old records thinned out on the turntable sounded like scraping your knee. 

We don't listen to songs for how long they go on, we enjoy them while we play them. The old men said you could skip stones off the sand dunes. Bones crouched into an old shame, they said to watch out for wolves they had no interest in being found they hadn't learned fear. The first night a stray dog limped its way up to my doorstep licking its teeth clean of liquor and gravy. An opportunity to say I'm still here. So you live forever, now what?