Our Friend
One week ago, the River Phoenix Fan Club met for the first time in the city.
Our friend, who loves Madonna more, but attended anyway, never made it back.
Street lamp fritz. Above the car, a mourning Autumn sky where we will joyride for infinity. A moment we must remember when we are older, of slightly larger width: The wind, part gritty, part cornfield, edges of air populating encroachment. The fluorescent buzz fades. Moths slam glass, as if to get under skin. Here we are in the search party.
We are calling his name. The swift beat in the pit of our legs, glutes want for a stop sign. Rows of stalks, half-green, half-wilt, enough ears to hear. I bite a cob, yellow-white kernels dribble down my chin. Voices scramble, rise, disappear. Car running. Someone walking so slowly, we think they are dead. Where are you? we say. Where are you! we say, no longer interrogative, but a declarative. Voice as map: X for here, O for there.
Walking hours in the same direction. “Didn’t we see that house before?” Elijah says. On the ridge a house in the holler, plumes of smoke chimney black and confusing. The parking lot near, but our vicinity to it expands. A lost shoe, a sprained knee, a lack of oxygen. The trees lean closely, listen. Circle one way, circle the opposite. The whiskey is gone, and everyone slurs. Eventually, the bridge reappears. Eventually, the holler is far away. Eventually, the house no longer exists, a woodstove in the back of our tongues. No one admits we were lost. No one admits there is no way we could have been lost at all.