They laugh
when I say I like it here—
like I’ve confused heat with holiness.
But there’s something
about a place that doesn’t lie.
The Valley never pretends.
It just spreads itself—
wide, cracked, sweating—
beneath a sky that doesn’t give a damn.
It’s in the way the sun leaks
down the liquor store wall at 6:42 p.m.,
in the power lines
holding hands across boulevards.
Out here,
no one chases dreams.
They work beside them.
The dreams drive for Instacart.
They sell roofing.
They play synth in a band
still deciding what to call itself.
God lives
in the hum of a laundromat on Tuesday afternoons.
No one notices.
Keep your oceans.
The Valley doesn’t need a view.
It is one—
burned and aching and alive.
All blister and bloom.
