‘A certain small-scale hell exists in the form of a park bench along the Wayside. Provided, undoubtedly, with good intentions- cut with clean lines from American wood and polished to a sheen- the bench has lived out its better days in a single season of use and now decomposes, angrily, in the sun. The winter has sucked the finish from the bench and its planks have bristled, becoming ragged and splintery and light as volcanic rock.
‘The Park Bench Hell’ is nature’s mild protest at the ruthlessness of American infrastructure, at the thick asphalt scabs that itch under the summer’s heat, at being condemned to road verges and medians. It is the inflammation around a wound, the body’s cure-all reflex to perceived infection, making the once-welcoming environment not barren, exactly, but certainly inconvenient to the would-be malignance.
Hold no doubts, reader, the nature on the side of the road does not want you to enjoy it. Every blade of course, brown grass hidden among the greenery is a reminder to keep your shoes on. The ants that emerge under your dirty jeans arrive to keep you from sitting. The carefully placed bird shit, the strange stinging insects, the staleness of your sandwich just seconds after it meets the outside air- this is nature declaring it is capable of ruining a human the same way it ruins park benches, through a thousand miniature violences and infinite time.’
“Fuck.”
The Editor pulls her arm back quickly, yanks her shirtsleeve down over her elbow. She’s opened a bag of potato chips and stripped the plastic from a gas-station ham and cheese. She hasn’t touched either, choosing, instead, to become deeply angry at my assertion that pre-popped popcorn is stale out of the bag, no matter the brand.
“What is it?” I ask, holding out a hand to steady her arm.
She pulls out of my reach and examines her skin.
“Splinter,” she says, “I hate these things.”
“I think my knife has a pair of tweezers,” I say, but the Editor shoots herself and slumps forward into her abandoned lunch.
Blood pours between the slats of the table and across my jeans as I struggle to extricate myself from the bench. I throw up in the grass.
-traveler
