Birdsh*t and Rust

Do you even like coming here she asked? In darkroom, cold breeze through the open window, the down duvee pulled up high. A question that he himself had begun to ask. No, not exactly a question, more the start of an answer that nobody was going to like. “Yes,” he said. “It’s beautiful up here” he said. Knowing this was not the answer to the question. Unprepared to unveil the apparition that was slowly taking shape in his brain. The haunting apparition that all this, all this boating in the open water with the cold and the wet and the water snakes and the teenagers who now have boating licenses and the abscence of adults and the granting of boat trips alone; all this finding and dismissing of rattle snakes at the top of the neighbors drive; all this bugs and flies and dirt; all this eating half cooked hotdogs and burnt marshmallows from dirty sticks; all the campfire smoke that follows you no matter which direction in which you attempt to escape; all this planning of activities when all you want to do is get on the highway and survive the couple hours home; all this close contact and small spaces and inability to pull away to find privacy to withdrawal; all this talk with friends who are family but at times you just can’t or don’t want to find the words; all this sleeping in bunk beds and constant envisioning of the top bunk sliding off the posts and crushing on the child lying below it; all the sleeping on the uncomfortable couch because of the snoring and the small bed; all the worrying about the dog trotting off leash around blind corners and being struck by on coming vehicles and dying or worse.; all the feeling that this is so fucking selfish, all the feeling that he’s robbing his kids of the joy and wonder and magic of first times, of boat rides, and top bunks, and smoke and fire and burnt marshmallows. Robbing them at fucking gunpoint. Worse even maybe. At gunpoint he would take away the magic, pocket the wonder and be off. But this, this isn’t a mugging, it’s a drowning, the ever present obsessing about the exponential worst in every situation, the scenarios fully played out that always end in darkness, the split second allocations of danger, never to be reversed, the worry that sits on their attempts at shiny fun like birdshit and rust.