Loranger

There was this place we went to junior and senior year.

Following a bumpy two-hour bus ride,

Dead cell phones, early morning exhaustion.

Once we arrived, the first thing we noticed was the air,

Too pungent, too clean

For our city lungs to comprehend.

There were giant trees and falling leaves,

Spiders the size of our hands, plants as foreign as coconut trees,

True blue, country sky.

There was clean rain, pure enough to drink,

Puddles contaminated only by the pure earth

Lightning storms like we'd never seen before.

There were constellations and shooting stars,

Bright enough to make up for the lack of shining lights,

Stars too bright, sky too clear, for these uptown eyes to handle.

We embraced it— climbing the mile-high trees,

Rolling down the hill, getting lost in the forest,

Splashing one another with our rain boots in the lake.

There are certain things you can't learn in the city—

The warmth of a campfire, surrounded by the people you love;

The sounds of losing your path and leaves crunching beneath your feet;

Lying on blankets in a huge, barren field

While watching the stars and playing "Would You Rather;"

The serenity of nature.

I miss it sometimes— at night, when I'm all alone,

Wrapped in blankets, the traffic lights illuminating the bedroom.

"Look at those phony stars, blinking their way into dawn."