By morning, we dug ourselves a trench. And hung photos in the dirt, old posters from our bedrooms, framed within the mud. We paced the few feet back and forth, crouching so no one could see our bobbing heads. At night, we met our parents, who asked what we did in the daytime. What business was it of theirs? We snuck out beyond the creek, to an empty field where we’d left our daddy’s pickax and shovels to make the trench our home. We called each other made-up names like Badass and Winnipeg. Why Winnipeg? We didn’t know. We argued over how much wider to make it, how deep. In the creek, we scoured for crayfish, sucked the meat straight from their tails. We buried their skeletons to solidify the floor. One of us said we were pioneers, the other said we were just playing. We rubbed our rivers, our fissures, the cracks in our palms with dirt. One us said we were self-sustaining; the other said, Dinner’s on the stove. We called each other Sir and Mister and puffed out our chests with a strut. One said, the world’s a cold, cruel place, so you’d better get used to it. But in the ground beneath the earth, the temperature doesn’t change. It isn’t cold, it isn’t hot. And if you lie down as the goldenrods fan you from above, it probably won’t feel cruel to you either. One of us said: there ain’t no going back, as the other smiled up at the sky.
