Mountains glint
like bunched-up tinfoil—
a backdrop of rut and ridgy snow.

Foreground is you on a salt beach so white
it hurts my eyes, a black hoodie framing
your bearded face.

Our boots crunch an evaporated lake
cradled in the palm of a range
swathed in haze, heat rising

from the grains that used to be water
for families to soak in, across the highway
from an open-pit mine.

First day out west, we climbed Ensign Peak
and hailed the view of summits drizzled
with cold, but I couldn’t help

fast-forwarding, picturing the melt
to brown, inoculating myself
against future heartbreak.

Back at the capitol building, girls with rosy
skin and white dresses gather on a hill
among cherry blossoms

and I take a mental snapshot—
a delicate exercise, holding the present
in my hands like a soap bubble.