take me to the land of fry sauce and funeral potatoes. take me back to mountain cradles, unsteady weather, sashaying cottonwood trees, take me to magpie city, algae-infested lakes, year-round construction and roadkill, take me down skinny streets where all the houses look the same, matching church steeples on every corner. let’s head to the crusty burger king on timp highway where i made my first $8.50— when the high school kid tells you the ice cream machine is broken and gives us a few too many quarters, i’ll smile and know that some things never change. i want to go to super bowl parties where we all wait for the halftime show, (except for the one who’s cousin lives in pittsburgh, so she has to support the steelers, or the man wearing the chiefs hat who is two degrees separated from kansas city.) let’s go where we all know the real super bowl happens in the fall, when we put on our red and blue and forget that the same man founded both universities. take me where people are polite, until they aren’t. drive me to the sticky-shoe theater on main street (you don’t want to know where it got its name), let’s get overpriced popcorn and suckers for two. let’s cruise down the highway, passing tacky billboards and letters above foothills, let’s breathe in the polluted air, try not to get sidelined by the texting drivers, let’s eat “authentic” hawaiian snow cones above sizzling asphalt. let’s park at the pond, and trick ducks with pebbles, and watch the sun get enveloped by the greenery. as it does, maybe i’ll mention that time i asked you if you thought i’d ever leave, and you laughed, and said “i think you’ll stay here forever.”
By Corey J. Boren
