Rest stop at Wheeler Ridge

Beginning with a line by Diane Seuss.

By Zoe Dorado

Freedom, which is a word that tastes strange, like a green plum. 

It was August. At the gas station, there were no tampons. 

But they sold off-brand Doritos and daily prayer books

marketed to men. Dave Branon told me to Be Grateful, so I was. 

James Banks told me to Stand Strong, so I did, reciting his mantras 

all the way to the bathroom stall: Oh, Lord, Oh, Father, please let me not 

offend anybody. The whole store was decked in Halloween: bloodied white streamers 

swaying like dogwood in the doorframe, Chucky smushed into the corner 

like an overripe orange. Poor California. Poor Chucky. Stupid 

summer, you were supposed to make me better at loving things. Last week,

K kept wanting to climb over fences, onto buildings, up a wall until he became 

untouchable. There’s a math to it, he said (even though he hates math). 

I must have been boring to him that day. I’ve stopped dealing with roofs, 

with math, I told him (goodbye roofs! goodbye math!). Maybe, I had wished 

for something simpler, less calculated. Something that comes to you inevitably. 

Like a good brown dog. Or a bad-easy loss. Fruit sweetening under 

the pressure of a mouth. The moment when two bodies, unaware, collide 

by accident. Distance, until there isn’t. All that’s left, spillover. What a mess—

these instinctive ways I’ve kept myself safe, brief, loved only by whoever knows 

I’m in the room. But then, rain. There it was—just rain. And I watched K search 

the sky. Soft rain. Summer rain. Gummy on the sidewalk, sticky and sinless. 

He was always ready to leave the sun for Boston, Bridgeport, some city 

where sadness gives itself away like an inside joke. I don’t know if he’ll ever 

get there. Sometimes I catch him laughing just to himself. Sometimes his laughter spills

over. Empties, suddenly, like coins from a jar. I wonder if we know how to be loved 

in proximity. When I left the convenience store, the Sierra Nevadas were blurred, their gold

trying so hard to become light. The parking lot was still pulsing, its heat, rising, clumsy 

in its new body becoming night. I-5 looked so empty this time, lonelier than 

a river—darkening, frantic, almost blooming.

ZOE DORADO has been playing One Night Ultimate Werewolf with her extended family.

Art by Stacey Gledhill