by Jesse Sensibar

Hunkering down on a steel gray October day near a mural of B.B. King that Bobby Sutton painted at the end of Promontory Point. Having a smoke and looking all the way to where the water and the sky meet. The rap of strait pipes echoing off the worn-out brick buildings on Erving Park at 5:30 A.M.

Sitting in scrub oak on the edge of an abandoned back forty on a Sunday in Michigan in November with your Daddy’s old side-by-side 16 gauge in your hands, watching a big buck move out of range.

Standing on a gently swaying dock in Sharp Rock inlet watching the last float plane get airborne.

Lying on the hood of your Chevy pick-up with your back against the windshield on top of that hill in the middle of Hart Prairie.

Drinking cheap beer and watching the storm roll in from all directions.

Drinking coffee in the pre-dawn darkness in the kitchen of an old farm house in the middle of nowhere listening to your truck warm up.

Never having to say “look” or “I know” or “I’m sorry.” Never having to say anything.

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Jesse Sensibar’s work has appeared in such places as The Tishman Review, Stoneboat Journal, and Waxwing. Jesse’s first full-length work, Blood in the Asphalt: Prayers from the Highway, is published by Tolsun Books. You can find him at jessesensibar.com.