Twisted Can

It is surprising what one can find in the desert, in those places just far enough away from town that people feel free to create, destroy and explore like children do. People, and the things they leave in the sand, become tribal and feral.

This thick metal was from an era when most food came in cans, particularly in the drought-addled California interior. Over the years, it had been crushed by truck tires and pockmarked by buckshot. Faint rust had touched the folds and holes during rare rains. I tried to imagine what colour the can had been before decades of bleaching under a cruel marching sun.

Amid the graffiti and party waste, in the fire pits next to the blackened rock walls, and with the smashed glass in the sand, lies buried proof that we are still animals. We wear excellent disguises, but at our roots we still sleep under desert stars and gnaw at the bones of our kills: at our roots, we are still wild.