From what Arden had told Murrey about dreaming, it was supposed to be a slow, dazed  thing. Mountain rivers, turbid with soil. This was not what his son had described. This dream  was quick, and sudden. It had been years since he’d driven the turnpike with his son, and yet,  here they were. 

When Murrey used to travel in the early morning, the land stretched on in a golden fever.  Hills absorbing the first moments of sun, a thin line of brilliant white along the intersection  between sky and soil. Murrey lived in the forgotten rurals of Pennsylvania, the no man’s land  stitching together a quilt of county and river. When Arden was small, this was a routine for the  two of them— riding the toll lane to pick up feed, watching the land unfold in waves around  them. Murrey would scratch his neck and peer through the rearview mirror at his son, asleep,  strapped into his carseat. In those moments, Murrey more often looked at his son than the road.  From the front of the car, he’d listen to the small respirations in the back seat, the little snot-filled  inhales. He was so young then. If anything, Murrey hoped that he would dream of this.  

Instead, this memory was different. Arden was there, but he was awake, and from  somewhere outside the car came the sound of running water. It wasn’t much at first, not  noticeable over the turns of tires on gravel, but as they made the dips along the turnpike, the sky  illuminated them— all of the runoff, pouring down the hills in disparate streams, some large only  to ants, others ferocious, awake. Arden banged on the window and his father rolled it down,  feeling the morning thrust its way into the back of the Chevy. Murrey watched from the front  seat as Arden stuck his hand out and played piano in the wind. From the front seat, Murrey  couldn’t see where the streams came from, but he knew it was the ice. It was spring then, and  winter was finally letting go of its hold on the world. 

He crouched over in his seat, his gut turning. He loathed that the land was letting down  its walls for him, that he came back to this memory when nature was shedding its skin. His wife,  before she passed, had called him bitter. And in many ways, he was— he took his coffee black  and grumbled when bunnies made their burrow in the bushes, but he was constant, and he was 

quiet, and he was a flannel of a presence. The thin, stubbly man that went about his way in the  yellow country. His wife didn’t know about his mornings, though. What it meant for him to  glance in the rearview mirror and see his toddler asleep in the back of the car. Even in the fact  that he had to look up to see his son in the rearview mirror, he held his son higher than himself. 

When Murrey woke from this thought, it was to a dark house. Rising and repositioning  himself, he ran a hand over his face, the sweat collecting in his pores. In making his way to the  kitchen, there was no sound other than his heels scraping over tile, the coffee as it brewed. It took  its time. Murrey leaned over the counter, his weight on his palms, staring at the dark stream  trickling its way into the pot. He rubbed at the stubble on his neck again, the silence amplifying  the scratch. 

When the coffee was half way through its futile effort, he worked his way to the other  end of the room and picked up the phone. Dialing the number was a reflex. A few rings and a few  belchings of the coffee maker filled the void, and his son picked up the phone. “Hello?” Ardon asked. 

“Mmm. Morning,” Murrey said. 

“Morning, Dad,” his son replied. He waited a moment. “Do you need something?” “No, I’m fine.” Murrey said. He leaned into the counter, listening to his son breathing  across the line. 

“Dad, could you, um, is that the coffee machine? Could you move away from it?” “Sorry.” 

“No, no, you’re good, it’s just kinda loud—” 

“That’s okay?” 

“I’d think so, yeah.” 

The silence persisted. Now tucked in the corner the farthest away from his coffee, Murrey  folded his hands under his armpits. The whiskers, white around his mouth, rubbed together. “You doing okay, Dad?” 

“Mmm.” 

“I can always fly back. Boulder has a real nice airport.” 

“Good for them.”

Arden was silent. Murrey could feel the call decelerating, and he quieted his own breath  to listen to his sons. 

“Okay. Dad, well, we were planning to go on a hike today—” 

“Ah, yup. Youse have fun.” 

“I’m thinking of you.” 

Murrey listened to the shifting as Arden hung up the phone. He held the vacant receiver  to his chin, glancing at the coffee pot, which had spurted its last moments ago. The wake of it  echoed across the coffee’s surface, ripples tensing and converging together, rebounding in on one  another. Outside, that bright horizontal line cut the land in two. In his mind, Murrey was  everywhere but the kitchen. In his mind, the bitterness of the coffee diluted, and it was morning.

Jessie Leitzel is human, scientist, writer and, most importantly, student. They have been published in reviews such as Rattle Young Poets Anthology and Beyond Queer Words, along with receiving Scholastic Writing Awards for their work in prose and poetry. They pursue aspirations in biomedical engineering and disprove the “science or art brain” mentality on the daily. Besides the page, they may be found at their favorite Pakistani restaurant, or editing their journal, Trace Fossils Review.