“Astronaut” and “Arizona” by Risa Scott

Astronaut 

My Aunt Carol lives on a little farm in Oregon. The forest there is so green, like it crept over every other color for being still. It’s a long trip, makes you feel like you’re moving away from Earth itself. Light plays with hanging moss fingers as you pass beneath and the rolling mist coming over the hills. The air there is heavy with more than water. It surrounds you until you start to forget where you came from. About halfway, there’s a country store that sells homemade ice cream by the pint. The cash-only sign reminds you of your wallet. Then that fades too, like the trees, fading into the past like your ancestors. There’s only coming home to a place you’ve never slept, full of the history of all that’s happened there. You experience it, not as a tourist, but as a witness. As the trees and the grass, the blackberry bushes, every mile marker. Is it possible for a place to hold more, like people do when they’ve seen too much? You can see it brimming over in someone’s eyes. But when it’s a place…it’s just this eerie feeling like it’s trying to pull you further in, like it needs to show you. When they interview astronauts they always say the most significant part of going to space is turning around and looking back at the Earth. They say they never feel the same again, like part of them gets left up there. Maybe some places just hold more. I don’t know. Maybe I just want it to mean something, being here. I think I just want people to stumble on this place in a hundred years and know I left something behind.

Arizona

Going back was never an option. As soon as the smell of pine and red dust grew faint in the distance he knew whatever he’d left behind would stay left. Everyone cries in Arizona. But nobody talks about it. They don’t talk about leaving either. They just do it because it has to be done. They pack an old duffle with anything they can see in the dark, trying not to wake the past year of holding hands and doubts. He closed the door softly and saw a baby garden snake on the front step, it had been cut in half. Probably by the neighborhood kids on their bikes. Another snake, smaller, wrapped around it, its head on the body, small eyes asking why. Time to leave. The Kershaw pocket knife his dad gave him before he died was sitting on the mantel as he walked down the steps and got into the car. He slipped it into neutral and rolled it silently down the driveway before starting the engine. The knife waited three hours to be remembered just as dawn broke on the horizon two hundred miles east. Too late. Crossing into New Mexico, tears welled in his eyes. And as Arizona disappeared, he realized he cried for the snake.

About Risa Scott
She/Her/Hers

Risa Scott is a nomadic photographer, web designer, actor, and writer living in a self-built tiny home with her dog, Bread. She travels the country (and sometimes out of the country) discovering new places and people, endeavoring to engage creatively within communities but is primarily based in Colorado. In all her creative and professional pursuits, she endeavors to tell honest stories based on real people and experiences.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/risascott/