Digging a hole in my front yard to plant a red maple sapling or maybe one of several lilacs, I unearthed a small town. My shovel slicing through roots and worms, decay, drilled down right onto a Main Street with its moms and pops—cafe, bakery, hardware store, bowling alley. A couple under a striped umbrella sipped espressos outside the coffee shop lit by the new sun I brought to them. The man wore a fedora and a pinprick moustache, horn-rimmed glasses. His companion crossed her legs in a yellow sundress, white polka dots like a multiverse. Because I had exposed them, I offered from my pocket a tube of spf 50, but they demurred asking instead that I sit awhile to discuss the issues of the day to catch them up on recent history. It had been so long since someone new had come to town. The umbrella frilled in the fresh breeze. The man gestured toward an empty seat. The woman uncrossed her legs in my direction, but it was my turn to demure—more holes to dig, more civilizations to uncover. I hadn’t yet decided if theirs was one I would not backfill like I had all the others.

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Eric Lochridge (he/him) is the author of My Breath Floats Away From Me (FutureCycle Press, 2022) and three chapbooks. An MFA student in the Rainier Writing Workshop, his poems have appeared in DIAGRAM, Okay Donkey, Whale Road Review, Moist, and Anti-Heroin Chic, among others. Find him online at ericedits.wordpress.com.