The young man scrambled alongside us in flip-flops with a bagful of sodas and let me lean on his arm because it was early and I was tired and the path was steep—that was what you did in this town: you climbed the volcano at dawn and ate eggs that the guides cooked in the soil, and then ran back down and bathed in the warm waters at the foot of the mountain—it didn’t occur to me to buy a soda from him, it didn’t occur to me that he was related to the jobless young men who lounged at the crossroads and said, Hey, hey, where you go?

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Rose Gowen lives in Boston, where she is currently working on a novel.

Her prose has appeared on the web in McSweeney's, Gargoyle, Vestal Review, and Linnaean Street; a poem is forthcoming in print in The American Poetry Review.

She can be reached at: rosegowen@hotmail.com.