If the Government Could Read My Mind They Know I’m Thinking of You - Alex Lake

I see you in the woods and you have a gun in your hand. Not a shotgun or pistol but a BB gun, propped up against your shoulder while you’re propped up against a tree and the tree doesn’t protest but it’s so big, its bark is ancient, and it’s digging into your back because i think it might be the slightest bit resentful about the lack of reverence you’re giving it. You should be looking up. You might be looking at me. You’re not looking at the gun.

You tell me you can’t move, you have to stay and keep an eye out for something scary enough to warrant a gun but fearful enough to run away from a single 4.3 millimeter pellet that only burns like a cat scratch unless you catch them in the eye. I ask what you’re hunting and you don’t tell me. You don’t even say you’re hunting, and can you be if you don’t move, don’t pursue circles against a familiar creature in its familiar land? It doesn’t feel fair to wait for the prey to come, but I’m not even sure if it’s prey or you just like hanging around with a long-barreled justification to warm up with your hands.

Narrative principles state that the gun will go off soon, must go off to fulfill its purpose of sitting still and smooth in calloused fingers, hungry for the gore promised by its existence. Either by your finger on the trigger or mine or maybe the tree spits out more bark and it lodges itself deep in the copper plating and the whole thing backfires in your face to leave a single hole in your cheek, neat and deep. Narrative principles state that I then must remove it, dig low beneath the skin to pluck it from where it rests against the bone that builds your face because that would justify my own being here, my own ability to stand and watch you watch me and watch the gun that’s only half a gun and watch the forest but not the trees. 

I came out here to tell you to come back inside, but inside is four miles north and across a river and I don’t think you particularly want to be inside right now because you can’t turn the safety off inside and there’s nothing to hunt but everything to wait for and waiting is probably done best here anyway because then at least you can be approached, be found in a way that takes more effort than walking through a door and surprises you enough to make you remember what you have in your hands. You think you’ve found it finally, that thing scary enough to shoot and fearful enough to run that could take a little buckshot and ask you to dig it out afterwards. It sits at the tree and waits with you.

I guess it’s better to just stay out here.