This is lifted from a creative piece I wrote a while back. It fits the mood of this Fourth of July well, when my mind drifts into fantasies of deserts, golden hayfields and cacti caked in the red glow of sunset–essentially anything recent political developments haven’t infringed as of yet (as hard as Scott Pruitt might be trying). 

The long California shoreline faded purple to the sun in the late summer’s evening as she set her soft head and light cheeks onto the old man’s chest. The thin white hairs on his red skin smelled of smoke from his Cuban cigar and his white polo shirt hung loose on his age-fattened hide, his skin tanned like sun-beaten leather caked in dust. His hands were scarred from the fishing in his youth but they were dark as if covered in a thick layer of dust from years of not moving. He bore a sharp tan line around his right wrist where a solid-gold watch ticked slowly. His eyes were proud and old and brown with sharp interest; hers’ were brown too but were spiced like cinnamon and if both their brown eyes were trees his had many rings and many small scars and hers’ had few rings and only one or two big scars. But they were deep and noticeable and if her brown eyes were trees you might think they had been struck straight up with lightning many years ago in the past and like tree bark as a map of a life the scars will stay forever and ever and can only fade with the moss.  And like tree bark each day they are renewed but the chiseled incantations remain etched upon the husk, skin and synapse alike recalling days that were different, days that seem peculiar now, days that when considered in the depth of this desert porch moment begin to mend the fabric of the past into a piecemeal quilt of the present, a pastiche of moments that defies the pre-ordained narrative yet mends the bark anyway lets the sooting fog rise high at dusk to ease the  mind into darkness.