#146

There used to be a troll in the creek by my house. His brows were the long stalks of grass overshadowing his big old man nose, lapped by the extreme edge of the water so that the creek was his mustache, the steep banks his cheeks.

Now his nose lies on its side in the middle of a broader, shallower version of his former mustache. His brows collapsed years ago. Even back then I watched his cheeks begin to grow hollow.

If I didn't know better, that nose of his could well be just another big rock, half-buried midstream.

Once upon a time a girl and I smoked cigarettes on new platforms of smooth golden wood and talked and drank beers and watched the troll slumber. We worked together and lived together and squandered all our other hours together like young idiots do. For years. One of them, by the creek.

The platform's boards have gone gray-tinged mossy brown with weathering, all the angles and corners windworn. Nails gave out on one part of the walkway, and much of the ground they are planted in has sloughed into the creek. The troll is dead. Haven't seen the girl in a long time. Others have come and gone, some for years in their own right, and still I remember her as I drift my gaze over the flowing waters.

Or I think about other stuff. It's a toss-up. Often enough I get both. The effects of the world are not always consistent.

Creek by my house still flows. I am still an idiot, smoking cigarettes and watching it stay impermanent.


--JL