TECHIES

-rep, toxic + trash lmao

Some stupid joke. I forget what I said, but I remember how he looked at me when he smiled at it. In his eye, lit by a streetlamp on some autumn night while we were waiting for a friend, there was a glint of humor too deep to reflect my words, too keen. It saw us both in that moment, as if far away, smiling back at us from a future heart longing for a day of old. He knew we would miss this far before I did, though I felt some pang deep down when I met that strange expression.

Our meter was set by the unrhytmic passing of wind - scouring, perhaps, for somewhere yet vaster to settle, never too hasty to leave a blade of grass untousled or a limestone crop unblown. Clever falcons rode this tide, being either sensitive enough or quick enough to use it for their hunts. I witnessed many kills. Each time a small, reptilian thing became transformed into a meal for fledgling birds, it was so devoured in nearness to its kin - seemingly aware that the bird's hunt had come to an end. I can find no suitable words for this exchange - oft-repeated, too instinctual to be ritual. It was violence without malice, peace without understanding.
2

Rest came comfortably on the height of those hazy summer days. I spent them beneath the shade of transitory hackberries, far enough away from the creek to avoid the buzzing things. Each one was twisted as if deranged from whipping storms, but gentle and content in spirit, so blanketed in yellow lichen as to never be alone. Beyond their reach cropped endless grass - patched without pattern, endlessly diverse, pale and deceivingly listless under the midday sun, reaching far out into the many hills. Speaking not their languages, my only true friends were grasshoppers and lizards, each skittish but playful when I got about to walk.
1

There was probably nothing besides the smell of a creek in late summer that could remind me of that time, and I resented her for showing me that hidden memory. I didn't think I deserved it; she didn't. But that's how it is sometimes.