Photo by Adrian Smith on Unsplash
by Rachel Smith
We drive up here in the half-dark and pull up in the spot that is ours for the night, back window looking out to airport lights the way you like it. I lower the seats, spread out our sleeping bags. You are out of the car, a flattened cardboard box in your hands, up and over the guard rail, and you step, slow and then faster, a rhythm of breath and footfall on the downhill run. The cardboard flaps and you pull it to your chest, an edge tight in each fist, leap and fall, the cardboard curving under and around like a caress as the slope drops away. You and it slide, grass feathering out beneath, a race towards the bottom, towards the road and the cars that push through rush hour traffic. I can hear you, a wind whipped fury of sound, and now it’s my turn, box in hand, and I’m there in the run and rush of it, hurtling towards some ending that we never speak of, to where you will be waiting.
Rachel Smith writes prose and poetry in Ōtautahi, Aotearoa New Zealand. She has been published in journals and anthologies including Landfall, Best Small Fictions 2020 and Best Microfiction 2019. She is an editor at Flash Frontier.
