Arizona Highways
Ryan said that if he was ever going to get a tattoo, it'd be a blue rose. Something about that meant something to him. We were headed south through Arizona, driving only the dust-blown trails of tired park rangers. We told ourselves these were old Indian tracks and pretended to trace the whole landscape on an empty map, a leather book of tea-stained paper. Ryan was the cartographer and I drove. Sometimes I think he’d have been better off without me, tracking his way through untamed high desert and writing it all down. He was a good friend, and I miss him now. When we got to Tucson we found ourselves looking for a place to stay. Ryan said maybe we go see Bonnie so I called her, but it had been years since we’d spoken and I didn’t know what to say. Instead, we spent the night in an abandoned parking lot on the outside of town. I couldn’t sleep so I got stoned and took a walk to the foot of the desert. I imagined a starving coyote waiting for me there, just beyond the dying illumination of the high moon. To pass the time, he made love to a cactus wren, and just then I wished things had happened differently between me and Bonnie. The moon was not quite full and still left enough light for me to look back and see where we parked. I thought I could hear him sleeping. Ryan wanted to leave by sunrise. He wanted to see Bisbee so that he could draw the whole town back into the mountains. He was special that way. He was special in a lot of ways I was too scared to face. When he died I really did call Bonnie. We talked for a while but she had to go. Said she had to pick up her kids from somewhere. I forgot she grew up. Ryan too, after a while. We all were supposed to, but I still find myself driving up and down the state. Those highways harbor grief in continuum. I lost something in the desert and I think that if I keep going, just a little bit further, I’ll be able to find everything that I’ve lost and bring it back. I believe that, somehow, I’ll find myself out there, and all the world’s answers.