My boyfriend lives on a kind of island paradise. Between two rivers, the house is swallowed by lush gardens, forever humid and green. The air smells like brine and the young peacocks eye us from their perch, their tail feathers are coming in and we always have to chase them off the road. There was a thick red tide and at night the flicking fish tails off the dock popped and sparked like fireworks, a blue-green-neon phosphorescence. The dolphins had corralled them beneath out feet to feed and we watched in awe as their fins dipped in and out of the water, causing an explosion of light as the mullet scattered. A fish flung itself up on the deck at my feet as it fled and I yelped twice, afraid to step on it in the dark, until my boyfriend caught it and threw it back. For god sakes wait until the dolphins gone! its little open mouth screamed.
At the local cafe, I have to remember that there isn’t a language barrier anymore, that its not polite to stare. There was a Bible study the other night, they pulled together two round tables and took turns guessing what God was thinking, what he would forgive and what he wouldn’t, who would make it to heaven and why, and ultimately settling on the fact that He was perfect. So that was that. Right now a buck-toothed man in plaid shorts is telling his companion about those crazies who post about Palestine and the supposed “abuses” of Israel. Half of my blood is Palestinian you ignorant fucker, I want to say, even though the job applications tell me to check the box marked white as my ethnicity because it includes Middle Eastern. Do you think Middle Easterners are white? I don’t say anything to him of course. I continue sipping my pumpkin-spice-infused black coffee.
I just want to tidy up my own kitchen, to put my pots and pans into shelves from the scattered boxes where they now reside, wrapped in paper and old tee-shirts. I want to put all my coffee cups on display, and curl up in some alcove of my apartment with my french press and a thick mug and edit pictures or read a book. I want to move to Seattle, take a car-full of my possessions and make it work. My boyfriend will start his garden again, he’ll teach me how to grow herbs on the windowsill. I dream of working 9-5 and stopping at a famers market on the way home. This is what its like to be unattached to any place. This is what its like to be between cities and jobs and this is what its like to return to a small town after you’ve changed so much.
Buen Viaje 