20 at 24 hours, awake.

the hazed sky was vast through the canyon as it opened lateral like antique scrolls. swept ragweed brush ran along my car in waves of brindle ready for fire season. that season starts soon. the canyon was vacant at six a.m. our caravan was just her and i but she was curled up in her car seat with my cashmere sweater pulled up to her chest like a cloak. corralled horses and bovine ran in silence along their splintered fences as we passed. absent to the landscape were the clusters of wild burro. they hid among the loping hills that gripped the single lanes. their footprints litter the dusty shoulders like hieroglyphics. loose cartilage shook in my nose like hot dice tossed on a tile floor when i sucked in the smell of horse leavings and morning dew. i could feel the dirt underneath my finger nails.

we descended into the quietude of flatlands that spread their innards before us. her soft breathes melodic with the car wheels wrung on raw asphalt were my choir. we passed a grand and empty house that sprawled ranch style with bare windows. construction tape adorning the exterior walls like roped tattoos. this homestead grew in a weedy plot of land adjacent to a giant crucifix. a marker at the threshold of an aged road leading up to the orthodox church. she stirred in my rearview mirror as though wake had come upon her. a plastic bag of sesame crackers was strewn on her makeshift blanket. she stirred but still slept.

radiance in my side mirror hinted to cars behind us. when i checked the reflection there was only a small cloud break to expose the laborious sun on it's upward climb. at the deep exodus of this canyon the coarse body of feral mule slumped in the unpaved shoulder. the swollen carcass abandoned by it's companions.