You know your children are still sleepwalking when the homeowner’s association has filled in the ravines with concrete. Twenty foot tall fences of white net denying entry from the woods. I have known these places all my life but still need a guide. I’ve been waiting for her to take me by the hand and re-evaluate the limerence we have both been fighting. A compliment to my color wheel, she wades through Champion Creek to break under the bridge and utter unpracticed swear words (I whisper them in her ear). The park closes at dark, and if the gate is locked, you can smash it with a rock. If instead you are greeted by flashing lights, you will sober up. You will sober up.
If you are looking for Clay Mountain and get lost, take heart that it has been collapsed. In the unformed backgrounds, I have heard them dozing. I have seen them shear the past like butter, exposing striations, and sending the coterie of creeps scattering. You can still find them though - like catfish, old and blind, they probe the brush with long, barbed whiskers. You can still smell the stench of piss and vodka. As if there weren’t already enough home-grown pedos in this town, they were the ones who snared Billy-Boy and sent him home a zombie. But at least now, the nets will keep him from emerging uninvited into your yard.
In my neighborhood, the electrical boxes stick out like sore thumbs - they’ll tell you a secret and then break your ankle. In these moments it’s nice to have a lion by your side, for she is the one who showed me how to side-step the nets and guided me to the field of daffodils. She showed me how to probe amongst the stalks and locate the stones. She pointed to the cenotaphs and said “This is where your children were once interred, but they keep walking.” They keep walking.
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