A Light Drizzle

The dirt walls are a pale orange, funneling sky through waves of rock and dousing us in starlight: bullets of fire shot through a canvas of ebony. Tangerine crevices catch tides of laughter, brewing and releasing them around us like a conductor orchestrating a symphony.
The ground rumbles gently, coaxing us forward- the sand gathering behind us in dusk’s last exhale.
“We should go,” I mutter, feeling the anxiety bubble in my stomach.
“Agreed.”
“Oh, calm down. We’re almost there.”
I reach into an over-stuffed backpack, rummaging for a headlamp. Water bottle. Camera. Phone. Ah, got it.
I’m peppered with rain.
“Shit.”
“Does anyone’s phone have service? We should let someone know we’re down here.”
Our voices have acquired a new vibrato, born from the body of the slot canyon or the trembling of our vocal chords. My hair is damp around my shoulders, waking the beads of sweat from salty skin and lofting them to the upper reaches of the wavy walls.
“My phone is dead. We should have paid for the fucking tour.”
The droplets are growing, pooling in the clouds and jumping down dimly lit chasms. Holding each other, no doubt. Grasping each other, as we are below.
My hands find others in the dark. There is urgency in the fingertips that grope for mine. Vivace.
A shallow river narrows at my feet, crawling up the canyon’s dusty skin. It quickens, rushing now, and my heels are slapped with impatient tides.
The water is reaching around itself, racing to an unknown end, herding our delicate screams into the now boundless darkness. We’re accosted by its raucous ambition, misplacing each other’s fingers in the downpour.
The tendons in my knees are unsteady, complaining in loud pops against the river’s thrust. A knife stabs through the joint, as its thrust backward by a flustered eddy. My screams of agony are inaudible as the storm nests in my lungs.
Only bubbles escape my mouth as the canyon blurs- tangerine wisps lightly illuminated by a flickering headlamp. Sinking under the water.
Drowning.