Shoes by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

First person view of my shoes on playa
Racetrack Playa @ Death Valley Park National Park, California
photograph by David Fulmer

When I was fourteen
I ran away
became
a hermit in Death Valley

I expected to dehydrate
to whatever was my essence
and in that way
discover myself

but a hundred-year storm came up
and nearly drowned me
in the parched landscape

Wildflowers bloomed like never before
Yellow and purple

Death Valley was too beautiful for me
I returned to suburbia
wearing a pair of shoes

a lady ranger had given me
when she discovered
I hadn’t any

*****

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois  has had over thirteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad including Beakful. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and. was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. To read more of his work, Google Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois. He lives in Denver, Colorado, USA.