Crossing Valleys
︎︎︎ Telo Martinez
︎ Mar 19, 2026
I’m hard in the passenger
and she drives with one knee, fresh from the bar
swerving out of an exit lane
and into the next one.
I lie when I say that I’m scared.
The concept of a girl being DL trade—
she says she’ll only cheat on me
with bitches, and I insist she call them “women.”
I’ve been avoiding this
all year, not because I didn’t want it
but because I knew that
if I put a face to the words
I’d never let it go.
She shows me a place
where the two valleys cross.
We can see as far back as the 20s
and through the midcentury,
when her grandfather owned these hills,
all so that his daughter’s daughter
could split a handle
on a rock with a boy from the web
He wanted to sink the lines
and bury the wires.
He wanted to clear the sky of man
so that instead the owls could tell us where to go.
She runs and winces
and claps her pumps
at the slightest rustling.
Coyotes know when a woman is ready for life
Some people have California
written all over them—not the glamour or the smog
but the hills and the jewel box
and the god’s view.
I didn’t kiss her that night.
I was afraid she’d forget it.
I wanted to wait until day so that
I could see the heat pulsing clearly under her skin.
Her hair twisting like animated coils as
I smell the wet soil simmering on her pale neck
She told me to “be careful with that cigarette”
I knew then how much she loved these hills.
I stomped out my cherry and imagined her
smaller and barefoot and bloodied.
I searched her forehead for a scar.
I wondered if she was lying.
I asked her if she’d ever been on camera.
I wanted her to be.
A world is missing a son,
someone so dusty and ready.
She’s the most beautiful woman I’d ever met—
I saw a mother in her and I didn’t
even know her name.
Only the one she invented,
the one that suits her best.
I imagined her younger
and powdered for smaller men.
I asked her if she thought I was low T
and she told me to shut up.
She didn’t like to think of what was missing.
She was so woman, so estrogenated and unmatched.
A woman so fertile that in little time
she could make a man feel like a mother.
Before this night, I didn’t know my son.
My son.
My son.
I became a man in California
and California gave me my name.
and she drives with one knee, fresh from the bar
swerving out of an exit lane
and into the next one.
I lie when I say that I’m scared.
The concept of a girl being DL trade—
she says she’ll only cheat on me
with bitches, and I insist she call them “women.”
I’ve been avoiding this
all year, not because I didn’t want it
but because I knew that
if I put a face to the words
I’d never let it go.
She shows me a place
where the two valleys cross.
We can see as far back as the 20s
and through the midcentury,
when her grandfather owned these hills,
all so that his daughter’s daughter
could split a handle
on a rock with a boy from the web
He wanted to sink the lines
and bury the wires.
He wanted to clear the sky of man
so that instead the owls could tell us where to go.
She runs and winces
and claps her pumps
at the slightest rustling.
Coyotes know when a woman is ready for life
Some people have California
written all over them—not the glamour or the smog
but the hills and the jewel box
and the god’s view.
I didn’t kiss her that night.
I was afraid she’d forget it.
I wanted to wait until day so that
I could see the heat pulsing clearly under her skin.
Her hair twisting like animated coils as
I smell the wet soil simmering on her pale neck
She told me to “be careful with that cigarette”
I knew then how much she loved these hills.
I stomped out my cherry and imagined her
smaller and barefoot and bloodied.
I searched her forehead for a scar.
I wondered if she was lying.
I asked her if she’d ever been on camera.
I wanted her to be.
A world is missing a son,
someone so dusty and ready.
She’s the most beautiful woman I’d ever met—
I saw a mother in her and I didn’t
even know her name.
Only the one she invented,
the one that suits her best.
I imagined her younger
and powdered for smaller men.
I asked her if she thought I was low T
and she told me to shut up.
She didn’t like to think of what was missing.
She was so woman, so estrogenated and unmatched.
A woman so fertile that in little time
she could make a man feel like a mother.
Before this night, I didn’t know my son.
My son.
My son.
I became a man in California
and California gave me my name.
Telo Martinez is a filmmaker from the coastal Carolinas.