We met up at Minnehaha Park.
The outflow from the waterfall,
surging after days of heavy rain,
drew us to admire the torrent
of water cascading fifty-three feet
into the roaring basin below.
We walked down the stone stairs
into the tailwater channel
and wandered along the trail,
the entire hike conversing,
skipping easily from
topic to topic, following the current—
your sobriety, my expat life,
our overlapping dating woes.
Across the bank, boys were fishing,
Prince was crooning from a Bluetooth,
singing of a raspberry beret
from a secondhand store.
An hour later we circled back
to where we began. What now?
you asked, not wanting the orbit to end.
Like dancing, you let me lead.
I know a place—Owamni. [i]
Want to try it? Extend our time
before our day slips away,
like water pulled onward,
vanishing down the tributary.
At the restaurant,
we order an appetizer:
Crickets & Popcorn.
A small adventure
on an August afternoon—
not as reckless as our grad school days,
but we are a decade older
and you, five years sober,
me, adrift on the far side of the world.
So much binds us,
yet it comes down to
one walk, one meal
before another year apart…
[i] Owamni is a full-service Indigenous restaurant designed to create jobs for Native staff, support Native food producers, and showcase authentic North American Indigenous foods and culture.
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