Cue Tunnel

I visit the elephant behind the university  even though she is hidden and sick/dirty. What would i do without you, she often asks me. I put my foot halfway into her cage to simulate a shared circumstance. She takes a floppy piece of broccoli from my hand. This is what i saved from the pot luck, I say, dismissing the question. We both know what she'd do without me- die. I am a shadow queen doing practically everything for an endangered animal that is cruelly caged in plain sight, but no one sees her. This weekend is a festival and the whole park is full of food tents. The festival is an art themed one, but we all know it is really about the food. The elephant has a cough and I brought some cough drops. She is grateful and large. I am middle aged, and weary. This summer has been a hellishly hot one. Last week the dam had nothing to hold back, just some credit cards at the bottom that used to be full of fine mountain stream water. It is the first time the river had to be supplemented with water brought up in trucks from Utah. It was't really explained how the water happens to be in Utah, but not here. We don't need to know, as a population in town. We don't care. So the river water that I wash my hands in is in fact Utah water. The bottom of the reservoir was gross- nobody had ever seen it- and it was totally coated with jet skis and abandoned pleasure boats. Some muck hopper climbed to the bottom of the reservoir and found her grandpa's high speed motorboat. There was still beer in the cooler, but nobody would drink that. Stale. The elephant loves it when I bring African news. I read it off of a newspaper that I found near the library garbage piles.