Pastorale

They went to this place often. The old corral, weather worn and dilapidated, stood off the dirt road, in the field of magenta and lemon-colored wildflowers. Red damsel flies and rusty-hued butterflies darted about. The waist tall grasses, even in early summer, were tinder dry and snapped beneath their feet. They walked quietly, absorbing the sun and the passion of their fantasies. The corral, a broken jumble of unpainted wood grain and sagging rafters, stood like a skeleton in the field. Open floorboards creaked and tipped beneath their bare feet. It was here, in the dappled light, in the ancient smell of horse shit, lichen and rotting timbers that they fucked like horses, like swallows, like rattlesnakes, like cicadas, like every animal that ever fucked. Then, they left, the evidence of their meeting drying in the high desert air.