Unreliable Eggplant

I knelt with outstretched hands.

I worshiped God today,

We walked, hand in hand.

I worshiped God today,

Those who know their names, don’t speak them. It’s a lucky thing you don’t know. You, the travelers who kick up dust and throw empty cans through your windows. Their names aren’t meant to be spoken. They’ll hear, and they’ll come. You, with your clumsy steps and dangerous disbelief, are lucky that their history burned in the fires of eastern religion.

They, the old ones, are bolder in the night—venturing out from between the rows. They glare with their red eyes. They look at us, the destructive invaders, with hate. When we pass by at night, they climb into our cars and sink into the backseat. We, the familiar, don’t look back.

We look straight forward until we reach the ends of the fields—until we reach the farmhouse. Then we sit. We wait. We don’t look back, we don’t look in the mirrors. We sit. We wait. We ignore the baby crying in the back. We ignore the old one sitting beside her.

When the sun climbs up over the horizon and the old one slinks back into its rows, we allow ourselves to blink. In the back, the baby sleeps soundly. We gently pull her out of her seat and take her inside. We make our breakfast and return to tending the fields.

He turned to her, “So this is the end?”

If I’ve learned anything from my time at college, it’s that if a safety procedure is stressed, you learn it. You don’t look at the annual crime reports, you don’t check the statistic for that subject. It’ll scare you. It’ll drive you away. You need this degree. Twelve years of education has pounded this into your head. You keep your head down and you learn the procedure. It’s there because it’s needed, not for bonus points. Rules only exist for the things that have happened.

If I’ve learned anything from my time at college, it’s how to ignore the fear in the barista’s eyes when you ask for 5 extra shots of espresso. “There’s already 3 in that,” the barista reminds you. Your eyes are dead, I know, they cry. But there are no tears. There is no energy for tears. Fear enters the barista’s eyes. They scribble “8 shots” on your cup. You ignore the heart palpitations.

If I’ve learned anything from my time at college, it’s that when you’re assigned a book, you read the first and last chapter. You know the base plot. You save knowing the inbetweens for bigger projects. Your eyes are tired. Your soul is tired. You save that energy.

What a frightful day. At that point, we began to question everything we knew. Had it always been blue? The younger ones said yes. But there was the all too real memory of something different, something more.

We all thought the world would end. That whatever it was we had forgotten about the heavens, whatever it was we knew to miss, that it would continue to disappear. That the sky would just be swallowed up one day soon.