Lakes that Stain
By Tria Andrews

I haven’t forgotten, don’t think I’ve forgotten, a California dusk and you on the porch step with a raised fist and a cold one.  Tight jeans and rolled sleeves, rolled over biceps, rock and roll and a cigarette, where is it?  Lit or unlit?  Maybe behind your ear. 

Do you remember that night and you on the porch step?  Inside, I sat cross-legged on the floor, high and I felt like crying for no reason at all.  I saw you through the screen, your eyes closed, and you danced without dancing, fist raised, and there were others, girls in kitten heels and Crayola-red lipstick and boys in black with their hips jutting and spines like crescent moons, but I only saw you.  And I said to myself like I often do, Remember this because this is beautiful.

I was a baby born in a panhandle under a ruddiest sky to a feather-donning mother and a thunderous father, who never gave me his blessing, not even once. I grew like corn, silky and yellow, and the men fumbled through me.  You caught me, not by the throat, but by my stalk, and said, How’d you like to set out West, where the sun never sets? and I said, Cowboy, you have my blessing, uproot me.

We rode out on your magic futon, ate TV dinners though we had no television.  Everyday we swam in the ocean, and every night I told your fortune with ramen noodles.  Saw plenty of cockfighting, but the bars were suspiciously devoid of smoke.  The magic futon lost its magic, and one night, I awoke to you chewing my corn-silk hair.  So we made love to stave off the hunger, and you moaned for the motherland. 

Cowboy, don’t you think California is still the land of milk and honey for Okies like you and me, who drive too fast on country roads, and like cold beer and bonfires and lakes that stain and know how to make a good pallet on the living room floor and call each other honey and baby and chicken and say bless his heart and know just how good that feels and brag about their sunsets and their mothers and their mothers’ cooking and shoot a gun, maybe just once, the left-handed ones like you and me, to feel that backfire in their hearts, who dream of the coast, California, as if Steinbeck never even existed? 

Let’s make it so, so we don’t have to tell them otherwise.  Please, please.  Let’s make it so.