A+B

NARRATIVE

First, this happened: you woke in a strange place.

A glade ringed by indistinct conifers, Bull Pines,

maybe, with your pockets full of bottle caps.

No shoes. No wallet, no memory of one.

This felt unaccountably tragic in the thinned air,

so it took a long time to get going.

And then you came to a river

and thought about swimming across

to the other bank, where you’d be no less lost,

all of you soaked and unhappy.

There was no way that was going to happen,

so you turned away from the loud water

and the promise of that river

humming away with your rescue.

Warm blankets. Mugs of steaming soup.

The shadow of a helicopter

falling on your prodigal self.

Enlisted boys trained to kill

by an amoral government,

though they turned out to be sweethearts.

They had mothers, too, they said,

and that made a lot of sense

as you wept, confessing embarrassing truths

about Vacation Bible School

and the cyclic humiliations of desire.

And then there was the crash landing.

And then the rationalizations of retreat

and the promise to yourself

that one day the world would know their brave tale.

Their culturally proscribed love.

At least their mothers deserved

an anonymous letter or expensive gift.

So you walked through nowhere

until your naked heels bled

on rocks and desiccated curves of bark

littering the dark ground.

The day had become its night.

In the distance people were badly singing,

which was encouraging.

Here, right here, you could always live.

And then you weren't lost,

at least in any geophysical sense.

About what happened when

you hobbled into their appalled midst,

not much more can be said.