Dr. Bronner’s and Uncle Eddie’s chocolate chip cookies, the paper bag hoarding a Saran Wrap pouch of oat crumbs, the first cookie I could buy at a grocery store
Horse back riding, jeans sliding my thigh skin off like tortillas, the way mom calls them burrito skins, skin, my skin, your skin, sticky and mottled and dry, my nose bleeding for the first 4 months, dry skin floating off me like a dandelion
No thunderstorms no Waffle House no humidity like a weighted blanket, just trash cans and roots exploding through sidewalks and the sun, god the sun, slanting and kissing and burning and hiding, the sun is all there is here
Running on squishy asphalt past the Rose Bowl past the golf course and mulch piles their tangy steam thick and dusty in my nose, a woodpecker showing off on the telephone pole and my breath sliding up and down and up and down never catching in the spot anxiety normally pools
The storms slide in politely, not shaking the house or cutting the power but overstaying their welcome, a mist slipping into the wood and concrete and shoes, filling our river our home our river home, the palm trees look confused in a gray sky, their fronds no longer shimmery movie magic but lanky and cold like squid
I tell you often that I want to leave you, my presence a kind of marmalade - sticky and bitter and melting in the heat, my rind in your teeth and the orange tree I grew from now brittle and crunchy in august’s dry soil
I tell you often that I want to leave you but you shouldn’t trust me, your kaleidoscoped neighborhoods and 99 cent stores and Jacarandas squeeze me tight and I love you and I hate you and I hate you and I love you
