Grace Miller

Leland Quarterly | Spring 2022

You do it to make sure you’re awake

Grace Miller

Outside, it smells like winter. The road quiets even though there’s no snow, just us lighting lamps in your room, humidity shrouding the dorm parking lot outside your window in glittering fog. The dullness of

a dream. I must be making up the way we are dying fast here, because I know you gave me your arm for real on the freeway heading for Pacifica and said pinch me so I know we’re both still alive. We feel old,

but we’re not right. In the church courtyard on campus, tourists have been taking pictures of the statues all week. I picture the statues standing for hundreds of years, watching all these young people running around asking questions. I picture the statues, young once. I wonder when they decided to turn to stone.

Standing on the beach in Pacifica offshore someone’s old prison, I tell you imagine West Japan, a straight shot off the coast from our school. Glitter sticks to my face from last night. If it catches enough light

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