I drove to the Blue Ridge Mountains today. The mountains are bigger than I am. They change their colors like children swapping mood rings among all ten fingers. In the evening, the mountains tint blue. It is getting late: dark, cold. I should go home.
I grew up north of here. Every fall, my mama said azizam, it looks like another Bob Ross painting, and I saw my hair in the falling leaves. She used to watch your show with her family before the men with guns came.
Every second, the earth reminds me it’s fall, watch me fall, leaves, death, decay. Even in the mountains, the scene turns acrylic, marred by men rutting the earth with their tires so others can follow.
On my way here, men in the passing lane drove parallel to my car. When I slowed down, they slowed down. When I sped up, they sped up. The woman in the passenger seat said they are just flirting as though the lie might incubate us from harm, as though these lines are containment enough.
In an older story, an artist or god might have made of us a laurel, a lotus, a poplar, a birch—transplanted flesh to root—and waited for the men to slip out of the frame. No blood, no harm; no throat, no scream.