Friday morning, coming into Auburn

• The mountain’s out;

• Mist over the valley;

• The West Valley Highway smells like rotting vegetables and pig shit;

• The roar of traffic, Sumner to Renton;

• The roads have buckled and sprouted holes;

• Flooded fields, floating dead pumpkins long after Halloween;

• Sagging farmhouses and barns, soggy timbers, built when the road was new;

• Calvin praying, Calvin pissing on liberals, Fuck Inslee, Trump;

• Men wrapped in blankets, pushing shopping carts;

• Disposable masks in puddles in the Walgreens parking lot;

• The buzz of small airplanes, constantly circling;

• One seagull sitting on the roof, waiting patiently to shit on anyone entering the building;

• Dick Scobee and dead Challenger pilots everywhere (Columbia, too), but no Yamasaki;

• Cats, robots, and oodles of candy in a beige room. The sound of keyboards clacking and the drone of meeting talk: wonderings, calibrations, birdwalks;

• The whistle of a train, recorded to sound like the good old days;

• The Japanese cemetery, across the street from Fred Meyer, sharing the land with “pioneers;”

• Red Lotus, Pagoda Room;

• Mossy and abandoned Carnegie library;

• Ukrainian gospel music in the watch repair shop;

• The high school built in 2004, trying to recapture 1924;

• Inspirational posters in the main office (courage, integrity, discipline, teamwork);

• The librarian who only cares about the basketball team, feeding the players Cup O’Noodles;

• High school beside the White River, (which is actually white, filled with silt), bad vibes, sunken;

• Trying to get back, I can’t figure out how to cross the tracks;

• Space mission patches, 3rd graders with trays, phonics;

• Miniature high school with tiny classrooms and a tiny library and a tiny parking lot;

• Main Street on the edge of town, finally crossing the tracks;

• Climbing out of the valley;

• Breathe.