it’s a big lightning storm out here tonight — it’s raining heavy on the window and on the roof, and i can sit in my apartment and look out the window and watch the lightning travel west and light up neighborhoods all the way right up to the lap of the mountains.

denver wants to be a big city so bad, but she’s still just a little cowtown with a couple tall buildings. she’s the gateway to the west, she’s the convergence of about a hundred roads and trails and railways leading to the end of the world by way of the rocky mountains.

denver’s a bright smile and a summer street festival, and spanish, earnestly but woefully mispronounced, and she’s a kind elder suntanned stranger giving you quaint and familiar and utterly indecipherable directions to somewhere wonderful you’ve never been before as they lean from the window of a chevy k10 truck, rusted through the door.

and tonight she’s a messy room and a rainstorm, flash flooding through wide streets to make sure they’re clean for when spring comes over.