Showerhead spews dusty water kneading dirt
Into muddy soft and clean
I’m leaking grime, nudge aside
the space galaxy curtain and blink droplets
Down my eyelashes to dry in the barbeque-time sun

Cieran squats all shrub-like
At the wheels of his 2007 rust-red minivan
Blistered toes in the brittle grass as he twists magnetic
Words to craft a new bible on his mobile front door.
The rotting wood of this roofless shower came stripped from the inner walls of that car–

Where he nailed them together to sleep
In the trunk in rootless pursuit
Of open skies and cliffside faces slackjaw.
But then we stunk, and for the greater good
He tore up his home to clean us.

Hamburger smoke burns seventeen years off the grill where it’s Friday,
Metal mugs and vanilla wisps of jeffrey pine cusp the sweet delusion of exemption
From shoes and socks, from TV ads,
We sway boundless to blasted bluegrass and I shake my tangled hair in time
An hour west by switchback roads from the wilderness boundary line

We are almost in the weeds, play hopscotch till the border swims blurry
Calling my mother, wading in the creek, a day's walk away and asking to be trusted,
Please.
I’m thinking liminal
And I’m craving it all in.

The outskirts are for the indecisive, and we are living large
In Groveland, no it's not the Valley– but there’s a hot tub, if you're sneaky.
Blackberry bushwhack crosshatch on hardened fingertips
Juicy runoff of hushing thunder, counting to five,
To breathing in brinks of bright

Baby steps from the trail and just a talus field past twenty-one
Snuggled pebbles on the bed beside Crown Lake, I swear I’m one of us but
It's October, and the granite is crisp this season.
To scrub a dirty face and squish my earthy heels between tupperware dinner dancing
And the blare of the fading green.

Eve Girzadas (she/her) is a junior studying Environmental Science and Sustainability at Barnard. She is from California and her favorite tree is the Jeffrey pine. She can be found on Instagram @evegirz.