Ed Sheeran has played with a loop pedal for over a decade.
For a decade I’ve never really stopped thinking
that’s the coolest thing ever.
I listened to Divide over and over
March 3rd, 2017
Senior Year
Bus rides through the Virginia hills
The air grey before the sun came up.

You’re moving and someone else is driving.
A calm against my body in the shape of the view. 

I grope myself for the words that settle against me
the same way as listening to Ed Sheeran
on the quiet morning bus.
Not many people have gotten on yet.
The kind of presence that is just you
like when you’ve had a good cry
and you feel thick and moist
in the way the fog is.

I once saw a headline that said the smell of a woman
crying lowers the sex drive of a man
or his testosterone
or something.
The point is they said it like it’s a bad thing,
true or not,
and I’ve never really stopped thinking
they’re wrong. 

I’d rather a man come sit with me in the thick fog
at the edge of the lapping waters
in the softness I hold
cupped in the hollows of my chest
than to be raring to bang. 

When I hiked a segment of the Pacific Crest Trail,
a little ways outside Seattle,
it was blazingly beautiful the whole way.
Looked as good with my bare eyes
as it would in a frame.
The enormity. The grandeur.
Epic. In a real way.
Magic lasting all the way through the walk back.  

The sun left, the fog came.
Fog mixed with green but not the saturated sort.
A more sparse kind. Tasteful, if you will.
Tufts instead of broad strokes.
Periwinkle wildflowers.
And the fog.
Steam from a black tea latte.
The land of fairies, mystical and whimsical.

All’s to say
we make love to the world
and the world makes love to us
in all sorts of ways.

Rachel Petterson recently graduated from Bridgewater College in Virginia with a B.S. in Health & Exercise Science and Spanish. She has written poetry and processed the world through writing for most of her life. Now she is making her published debut.