Buffalo

On the cool bench I could sit and imagine myself in a landscape of buffalo. The parched orange rusted earth, flat and vast. I only saw a motionless herd huddled close to the glass, but the buffalo sniffed and grazed, their matted fur and heaviness bumping against each other like the sleepy clappers of giant bells. Finally, one peers through the glass and sees me, frozen on a bench. They were alive; I just couldn’t see it. The transparent glass only allowed a view frozen in time. This was the only way we could exist for each other. What I saw were buffalo. Silent. Paralyzed. What the buffalo saw was a still life of a person in thought. Our dioramas were like photographs of something that never happened. It made me wonder if my memories of us were just dioramas seen through the clear glass of my desires.