Washing His Realtree Hunting Jacket at the Laundromat - Lili Grace Ward

As I walk the desire line back to my tent, I brainstorm the best way to tell my friends I made a giant crop circle in the sand. I walk the long way back because no phrasing of my news is virtuous enough. The promontory's sun is venomous enough to burn the childish flush back onto an overgrown babe. As so, two people gather in the shaded clearing of the crowded track, a mother rubs sunscreen into her adult daughter's cheeks.

when my tent seems too far away I kneel in the shadow cast by my own parked car to remind myself of the time I took my sixth wrong turn as I watched a dandelion blow around inside my Ute. The air through the front left window tossed it around like a trapped fly.

It's the next left, by the following right I feel as if I'm starting to get to know the person in the car behind me through the rear view mirror. at the last intersection I thought they seemed palatably coy, but as I approach this roundabout I can recognise the awkwardness in them.

My trips are shortened by the assumption that the person whose car is in front is doing me the same courtesy in their rearview, and that by the time they pull over, the nuances of my carefully curated driving persona will have made themselves obvious.