Two figures stop hiking to prepare lunch. Yosemite Valley in spring, an unearthly backdrop.
One woman is my cousin. The other sways in a state of dissociative stupor.
Is it me?
I cannot focus on streams of consciousness long enough to be certain.
I watch The-Woman-That-Is-Supposed-To-Be-Me spread her lunch on a large rock. An orange from a roadside stand, a PBJ sandwich, and home-made chocolate chip cookies that were schlepped all the way from PA.
She-Who-Is-Supposed-To-Be-Me stares at the scenery in awe.
She eats the orange.
The women speak, quiet and playfully caustic.
The sign says this is a seasonal pool and not a lake.
What a fucking ripoff.
Both laugh and watch the river twine through the valley.
It hurts to eat. To exist. To breathe.
She silently cries, barely sidestepping the esophageal pangs of anxiety-and-grief-induced-vomiting.
She writes a little poem on her phone.
She eats a bit more.
She snaps a photo.
For him? For no one.
She turns to her cousin and says:
Sometimes I don’t feel like I can make it.
april 1st 2019 – 3:22 PM
i feel like dying
next to Mirror Lake
it’s not even a lake
just a seasonal pool
in a riverbed
isn’t that a real bitch?
