You sometimes glimpse it, the further dimension.  When you drove through a cloud for the first time as a girl, on the brightest, bluest day, over the road to Oregon, you beheld it.  You sensed the fog of a realer world overlaying ours.  Did you?  You knew that it was.  You had always felt there were other worlds, and inside that cloud for four seconds, your conviction grew solid in your chest.

Late at night, when you are driving with few cars, and taillights vanish into a haze, your anticipation grows quickly, with the clack of tires on the highway.  A cloud crosses the road, and you are in the midst of a world intersecting ours.  Too real, too true to be seen clearly by our minds.  

Wide open, keep those eyes.  Those glorious, cloudy intersections.

photo via

the brightest lights

Lying back, I watch our breath as small clouds, conversing.  The stars shine brilliantly in a velvet sky.

The firelight blazes in your wide eyes.  Our words mingle with the woodsmoke, carried up together to join the universe.

Laughter: the trees are on fire!

photo by Lawrence Martinez.

Our rainboots were muddy.  We had been trudging for minutes or days: the midnight sun betrayed time.

Then, we walked into a month.  We knew it was a month because the colors had gone that color and the sun had disappeared behind a wall of cloud.

"Lunch?" my sister said.

We ate turkey and cheddar out of brown paper bags, sitting on a log.  Water dripped from trees onto our laps.  Leaves went soggy underfoot.  Blinking rain drops from our eyes, we smiled, and heard a starling sing.

photo by Maggie/Folkloric.

How long do the days go on and the nights go on? How long do the peaks rise from the clouds? How long will the land be barren and wet? Thoughts flickered through his mind like a dying television set.

Shuffling through sticks and trees that weren't trees, that would never be trees. His white shoes were scuffed and seeping with the wet earth. Wind came and stole his hair. Only desolation breathed here. Nothing lived for long or high, unless it fell off the edge. And the edge was always just out of sight. There was no edge, yet there must be. Every morning he rose in search of it. Every night he laid on the naked earth and cried.

His shorts were torn. His heart yearned for the edge, the break in the ground.

One day, he found it. He stumbled back, shaking. Here is the edge, he thought. Here is the edge.

photo by Cody Cobb.

I can still feel their grooves between my fingers. My stubby fingernails rubbing back and forth, back and forth, like a metronome over their teeth. They traveled in my pocket, any pocket--with me the whole day and no one to know.

In the evening, when I was home and bathed, Mom would shout at me from the laundry room: "Did you have sea shells in your pocket again, my dear?" I would run to the dryer and press my ear against its hot metal side. My sea shells clinked around inside, up and down, up and down, singing to me of our day together. A day now that we could never have again.

I still feel the smooshy wet sand under my toes, squishing as I made friends with the shells. Purple with a chipped tooth. Shiny black with hidden eyes. This one has a pattern like the Eiffel Tower! And this one has one small hole. You and me shall never be parted by clothes dryers, I whisper to it. A sea shell tied around my neck, singing to me of our days together.

photo by my sister emily.

Remember: mountains are sharp and unfeeling. The littlest stone breaks loose. It scrambles for a foothold. For a second, you look up, see birds--black kindergarten silhouettes. Then, the stone--the pebble--strikes your forehead. You fall. Scrambling, you feel the blood and and water run down your throat. Your nails scrape stone.

Nothing, the mountain whispers at you. Thundering, the rocks scream: Who are you?

Halfway down, a flat ledge catches you, holds you still. Breathing. Still breathing. Breathing. Still breathing.

drawing by Chris Hernandez

Together we stumbled feet-first into the water. It had been clear; our feet muddied it. He gasped as the cold seeped into his boots. He grabbed my shoulder. I hunched over, breathing hard. Where have we come from, I asked, my eyes bleary.

photo by Missy Prince.