I'm reminded by you in the moments where space speaks for itself. In the times when the wind blows that wisp of hair into my mouth, and my clumsy smile catches it over chapped lips. When I feel what you would say (but I'm not sure) in between teeth when I'm doing something wrong. Or your light hearted laugh when I accidentally did something right (and I know).

We had been driving for what seemed like hours, but I had lost count next to you in the passenger. I watched beads of sweat coat the edges of your nostrils, ducking behind the grooves in your cheeks. The coiled roads had curbed my appetite a new direction, and you slowed down with this in mind. There wasn't much left to eat, anyway: some strawberries, a watermelon rind, empty Lara Bar wrappers. With your eyes on the road, I tried to keep my thoughts on your laughter.

But my retching stomach disagreed, and I pleaded that you stop. The next pull-off was just around this bend, you said. I couldn't wait, I said.

I lunged to the backseat, reaching for the cooler, our only life line. Dunking my head into the hot plastic, fruit flies to puckered lips and closed eyes.

Suddenly, a burn pummeled through the pit of my gut. Chunks of bile leaped from my throat and into the vessel. I heard the scratch of gravel beneath our tires, and began to cry.

You pressed your palm between my shoulders, a reminder you were still there, and I let out a deep sigh. Wiping my mouth with the sleeve of my sweater, I turned to your furled eyebrows that read concerned. Do you want to do this out there?, you said, with a smile. Not really anywhere, I said, and laughed.

It was just before morning and the heat was dry. She poked holes through the knots of her hair with an index, dragging stubborn strays along the way. Twisted, she sat. Her knees were burnt with remnants of crimson clay, still crusted from the day before. Streaks of dirt coiled her beanstalk calves. Growing agitated, she sifted through the loose ends between her knuckles and watched them glide into the wind like a lost balloon.

Halfway from home and the other half nowhere, she waited in the car with one foot on the pavement and passenger door wide open. She rested the other on the dash as she excavated wads of tawny mud from her shoe with a plastic knife.

Suddenly, she heard laughter. She looked up from the artifact only to find an endless sky, alone. The echo of a distant cackle trickled down the basin, quickly like a heavy rain, then silence.

She scanned the empty parking lot, their car the only one in sight. "It's nothing to worry about," she naively concluded. Nervously and cautiously she move towards the larger boulders protruding from the Earth.

She stepped over the tiny rocks like she would a tightrope, steady and unwavering. 

"Hello?" Her voice cracked.