When we sat and read Walden where Thoreau wrote it we were paying homage- being purposeful. Tourists took photographs but we were reading. An overweight man in a beige and green Hawaiian shirt came up to us and quoted Thoreau, said we “were doing it right” and left. The birds sang as we read about them, this had to be purposeful.

You drove us in your Uncle’s blue Subaru. You don’t have a license, but you have aspirations of being an English professor one day. You read the canon and some. You can quote Dead Poets Society word for word. We talk about how Whitman saw the world. How there’s nothing after, so why not find light in the littlest things. You said my poetry made me sexy. I hadn’t seen you in a few months. You had American Spirits in your armrest. I still think you’re a flower at sunrise, about to open its color to the sun.  I’m still trying to get poet without the word depressed coming first but I think you accept it. You said, “I have to stop doing things with the intent of making my life like a movie.”

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When we sat and read Walden where Thoreau wrote it we were paying homage-being purposeful. We sat on stumps of trees. Six granite slabs delineated Thoreau’s house. The graying man in the Hawaiian shirt was the only one who approached us. He quoted “Where I Live and What I Lived For,” the introduction to Walden. The type of quote girls who don’t know what Transcendentalism is get tattooed on their ribs. We smiled when he left.  Making eye contact-proud someone noticed us.

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When we sat and read Walden where Thoreau wrote it we were paying homage-being purposeful. I tried to stay focused on “Walking,” the essay I was reading but there were gnats getting caught in my hair. You looked peaceful and I tried to do the same. A man walked by with plastic grocery bags in his hand. His rubber flip-flops kicked up dirt from the forest floor. There was no topsoil, there was no decaying of leaves, there was no rebirth.

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When we sat and read Walden where Thoreau wrote it we were paying homage-being purposeful. I wanted to hear the birds chirping, the one’s Thoreau wrote about. I saw them, if only in my imagination. All I could hear were cars on the distant road. Voices rang from the pond clad in too small bikinis, floaties and tan pectoral muscles. The top 40 sounded sandy from a distant boombox but it all seemed cinematic; a beach party. I was bombarded with all the voices I was told to hear, I couldn’t listen for the one I needed. You told me about all the books you’d been reading and about the French language. You said, “I have to stop doing things with the intention of making my life a movie.”

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