A. Benét

You are maneuvering the streets

of Hollywood like only a native 

could, so expertly I get lost, until 

 

you make a comment about beauty 

and I look for scenes of blues and greens, 

white crowning strong browns. We 

 

are at the top of a concrete slop, what was 

once a valley, swallowed by plastic 

and glass. In the distance, mountains 

 

stand one in front of the other, 

begging to be seen as buildings 

crowd them out. Because you said 

 

beautiful I thought about taking a 

picture, my hand twitched for my 

phone, but I hesitated because 

 

just then, I wondered if all of this 

used to be mountains. The cracks 

and abandoned buildings, the electric 

 

cars next to the rusty gas sedans. 

You say oh yeah and I think you’ll add 

more, about how all this used to be 

 

dirt, too soft, light colors, a desert, 

how you can see more than what’s 

right in front of you. It was so strange,

 

all this metal and decay, how easy

it was to separate the land, to see friction 

and name it beautiful. I wanted you 

 

to choose one. I wanted to close my eyes

and see flatlands and soapstone, wanted 

to kiss where desert first touched ocean,

 

but we turned the corner into a mass of 

cluttered cars and bodies, and I’d forgotten 

there were mountains here at all.