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we will make holiday.
[aslan]
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-Boulder. Mountains, air cold by four thirty, boys in wool hats. Hot things to drink, man playing guitar, vegan Mexican food, boots made for walking. Wide streets, paved with wide bricks, underneath the earth, moist with snow melt. Wind with a voice, mountains crouching against the sun, silence under the pines. Women's hands, strong and slender, rings on our fingers, songs in our bones.
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Petaluma. Knitting shops with fat wads of wool yarn, displays of shining blunt needles. Man on the corner, selling strawberries. Sun in my eyes. I never notice until it's too late, him shrinking in my rearview mirror. Hands in the dirt, dishes that don't match. We all stop to watch the moon every night, out in the fields every morning. Brick streets, park benches, the woman at the bank with the green eyes. She said, Honey, you're twenty-two. You're doing the right thing.
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Flagstaff. Night, Christmas lights twinkling, every store open late, doors thrown wide. Music at Celebration Square, dogs waiting on sidewalks, Thai food whenever I want it, laughing people we know weaving through the crowd, unshaven, long fingers. The smell of spice and candles, an old woman changing shirts in front of the three-way mirror in Rainbow's End, braless, her skin browned and lined, my sudden desire to unlearn my own self-conciousness.
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San Angelo. Tex-Mex and the parking lot behind the church, chips and chunky queso with women who have known me for years and years, sinking into a bed that feels like arms around my waist. Summer starts in February, the earth baked and warming my feet, my face, the sky. Drive out to the lake like I'm seventeen and bored, watch the night, wish for things that I haven't met yet, can't name. Walk like I own everything, because these are all the things that I know. Nothing that I don't.
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Where is it? I'm so hungry. I want to walk through every city on earth, every wilderness outside it, until I smell what I'm looking for, until I hear those voices, feel that fire. Where? West to the deserts, south to the bayous, north to the mountains. They say the gas is running out, but it doesn't matter. I'm not afraid of walking.
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Where is this empty building, wide glass windows, dust motes lazily circling, a brick archway, that scent that makes the skin crinkle along the backs of my arms. I've only caught it twice. Where is such a man, one who isn't afraid to laugh, who blocks out the sun, who tells me things I need to know, who is tall enough to see past me. Where are the streets shining with recent rain, the goat skull nailed to the grill, the women who laugh, pie crust on the counter, sheer curtains lifting in the breeze, front door wide open, sand on the carpet, spinach dip and beer in the fridge.
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Where is the rock climbing at dusk, the rituals of the apache rose peacocks, the telling of dreams, the hammock at night? I see them in dreams. I wish I could seal a letter, set it on their front porch at dawn, say, I'm coming. A deck built from worn boards, canoe tipped against it, a clothesline with dishtowels and dresses and ribbons, maps nailed to the wall. These things that echo inside me, they drive me wild, they remind me that I am a woman, a daughter, a mother. I will find them, or make them. But where?
