Prairie

I can't take you out to the prairie as much as I could take you to summer, the sun high over Topeka. "It's hot," you say, constructing, and I know the Tallgrass could be described the same way: tall, grassy, mixes of auburn and gold. I can't take you there, even if there, because "prairie" is past construction. "Am I feeling these feelings, or is this an imagined feeling?" someone asked Margy on my first visit. "This is real," she confirmed, the word that is challenged through my academic life, colliding with life.