Scarlett Watters

We were in Denver the other night.

Everything was alive.  It was a reawakening of the senses.

Not the people; they were all wasted as usual. The air was warm and the sky was much brighter than it should have been. Denver's own luminescent bubble of pollution? I was wearing these ridiculously bad shoes for walking. This particular park never feels real at night. The lights, the hills, the sidewalks, the buildings are all surreal. It is the same park where some serial killer murdered several homeless individuals and left them on the bank of the Platte River. The sky was light, but the park was dark and you could hear people in the shadows and the river fronds rustling. A good place to nap or. . . ? A bench was graffitied with 4:20. Across from the park there are two tall sky rises that up until recently I did not know were apartments. In between these buildings there is an epic staircase and bridge (?) that provides a safe way to cross the train tracks. Everything is artistically lit with an emphasis on some white metal bars that peak towards the sky like a steel mast of a ship. It reminds me of a spider or squid. You can lean back over the rails and look upwards at this elliptical spider while imagining it is eating you alive. The trains create man made thunder under your feet. I aligned myself with the diagonal tracks as a train rushed into me only to zip under my feet. It was full of the most beautiful rubble I have ever seen: mangled metal that made a visual of the sound of the train groaning on the tracks. When the trains were quiet you could hear wind chimes on someone’s balcony. Several people walked by while my boyfriend took pictures of the towering squid. Two men were absolutely drunk and asked "What the hell is he taking a picture of?" They didn't even bother to look up. Another very drunk man did look up and whipped out his camera phone: "That would make a sweet ass picture." What struck me is the fact that these people have probably walked across that bridge a hundred times and never bothered to look up and to really SEE. We walked back through the park and crossed the bridge over the Platte River when it started to rain.

The wind was so fierce that the water was rippling and white under the bridge. I closed my eyes and pretended I was by the ocean instead. The only difference was the smell and the sound. The icy rain pelted our necks.