Cripple Creek

Floating lazily
Reaching the shore
whenever they happen to get there
Memories are like bottled messages
 
And so I remember Cripple Creek
one single day
from so long ago
 
I was 20
the thinnest I'd ever been
spending a few weeks in Colorado Springs
an intensive photography workshop
 
One of our field trips
was an hour or so away
a gain of several thousand feet in altitude
Cripple Creek
More foreign feeling to me
than some foreign countries I'd visited

The first memory
is one of the photos I took
in my strange humanity series
i didn't call it that at the time
but I enjoyed capturing weird looking people
doing weird things
or simply thinking weird thoughts
 
My subject lived in a trailer
perched on a hillside
high up in the mountains
when she stepped out
she would have to step down an incline
a metaphor for her whole life
 
She stood in her doorway
arms stiffly by her sides
home perm gone bad
polka dotted long-sleeved shirt
stuffed with newspaper
or her body
 
The second memory 
is of going to a restaurant
and not ordering anything
the only time in my life
I was into starvation
The night before
I'd had a glass of grapefruit juice for dinner
Sometimes I had a few bites of food
in the college's cafeteria
It was enough
I was fueled by leering stares
compliments
and random sexual encounters
 
There's not a third memory
just a collage
and a specific stored feeling
 
Everywhere I've ever been
has had a unique feeling
I feel the hell out of everything
I feel as much or more than I think
 
I don't want to go back to Cripple Creek
 
I don't need to.