the other side

There are fields not long from here. We could walk through them, if you wanted to, watch the sun set over the stalks of corn. The air is thick and warm this time of year. Chew on it. Smoke it in. It won’t be summer forever, you know, and this walk will get longer every time we do it.

There will be a time when this is all a memory. Tell me if the sun on your face gets any warmer in retrospect, a hundred miles and a thousand days away from this spot with me. When all the days blend into one and your mind gets hazy, tell me do you look at this time any more fondly? Maybe you will smile more when you can’t remember the needles of dry grass in your side and my elbows in your stomach, and that heavy humid silence over both of us.

Write me a letter from the other side, by a beach somewhere I’ve never been. Maybe I will reply with all those things I couldn’t say before. Read them far away from me where I can’t watch your face or feel that hot, shifty thirty seconds while you think of what to say. Don’t say anything. It will be too late by then, and that is the whole point. Tell me how the surf is. Is the weed really any better in California?