Big Sur
by Valerie Braylovskiy
We drive on roads salvaged
from landslides, listen to human tragedy
in a true crime podcast, one woman kills
in a Lululemon. My idea to move our bodies
though you’re the healthy one, counting
banana slugs sleeping like commas. We traipse
through streams and big trees, roots strewn
over human tracks, dried-up gushing
water. I didn’t grow up with frogs or mud,
you were born outside with all
sorts of facts, the Santa Lucia Mountains
lived underwater, eucalyptus leaves are poisonous
except to koalas. All I know is that trees hear
decay. We emerge from the canopy— what to tell
you about myself? My body has traveled too far
to notice sky, how light turns water holy.