Back Home.

In three days I packed up my life in San Antonio and moved back in with Nolan in California.  The West Coast has some magnetic pull on me, the way water always run down to the deepest crack in the tile.  The way the black mould builds around it, the deep doubts that went into my decision to ever leave my home in San Diego.  

In three days, we tore down the home I had built for myself, broke book shelves into splinters.  Unhooked pictures I had hung to hide holes I had punched into the wall.  I lost a set of keys and found them in an old shoe.  I tucked my passport in a folder with pictures of my mother.  Things I valued made their way into suit cases, things I could replace found their way into trash bags that were advertised to hold 40 gallons of dead grass, debris, springtime detritus.  Everything I owned could fit in my Nissan and we stopped by coffeeshops to say goodbye to the friends I had made.  We promised to be different in our return, I'm holding onto that promise.

I am iron-fisted and yellow-bellied.  I didn't want to make it on my own anymore.  I didn't want to have my pride in the way of a life shared with someone.  The bravest thing to do is to love someone, the hardest thing I've ever done was drop Nolan off at the airport and wave goodbye, smiling.  In three days, I quit my job and left the Hill Country I tried so hard to romanticize.  I'll miss the white-walled sanctuary of a creative space to call my own.  I'll miss the train that screamed its presence like a mockingbird.  I'll miss the way the asphalt smelled in the post-rain break in the humidity.  I'll miss a lot of things, but I'm a different person now.

I'm older now.  Six months can do that to a person.  

We left when we wanted to and hit El Paso by dusk.  We chased elements along the way.  We hit fog in some mountain range that I couldn't tell you the name of.  Everything I had and loved was in that car, I didn't want to lose it all to the fog and my lack of depth perception.  In the gossamer veil that covered the mountaintops.  Deadly, smokey.  Miscarried clouds that threatened me, I woke up Nolan from his nap and had him drive through it.  He was confident, comfortable.  I know I can't do some things on my own, and that solidified why I made the decision to go back.  His calming presence, his reliability.  His ability to save me when I'm white-knuckled and shaggy-breathed.

We chased the rain, too.  Big puddles.  Giant puddles.  We hit them on the way to his sister's house.  We saw Las Cruces in the distance and passed signs that advertised authentic Native American goods.  We saw Las Cruces in the distance, we took an exit that advertised a new Wendy's opening.

The two days' drive out to California was punctuated like that.  Element diverting.  Pointing to distant towns, they had words like Halcyon and Sunshine in their names.  They promised things, artifacts of the manifest destiny that led the founders on their journey.  They had probably never felt a sun so hot.  It all felt like hell sooner or later and a lot less like paradise.  And up close in those small roadside towns, we saw boarded up windows, dogs on chains, billboards to buy 2,000 acres of land for $13,000.  We stopped at a gas station where the coffee pot had been on so long the remaining brew was scorched and sticking to the pot.  We stopped at another where the bathroom was to the side of the building and didn't have any soap.  We got some spiced gum drops, the kind our grandmothers used to eat, and some cold ginger ale and left soon after in a dust cloud.  We continued on out west and never shook anyone's hand along the way.

The car rides were silent sometimes, we held hands sometimes.  Milo came along, too.  We took turns holding him, we took turns napping.  We took turns paying for gas or food or the odd scratch-off to break up the monotony of one road and a thousand miles ahead of us.  We didn't eat well those few days, we slept even less.  We never talked about the future, because the future was right in front of us on the I-10, merged with us onto the I-8.  And when I could taste salt in my mouth, I didn't know if it was from tears, sweat, or my imagination running wild at the thought of the ocean.  

The desert can play tricks on you sometimes like that, but I beat the coyote at his own game.  I left Texas, left the desert, left the southwest altogether.  You can find me in San Diego now, at coffeeshops and Chinese restaurants, having the life I was supposed to when I moved into this house for the first time a year ago.

Homemade Ginger Ale and Spiced Orange Peel Candies

Inspired by our road trip snack choices, a refreshing ginger ale and spiced orange peels.  Pair with a scratch-off and you're all set for your next road trip.

For the Ginger Ale

Ingredients: 

  • 1 piece ginger, 6-8 inches by 2-4 inches (hard t gauge, but the more you put in, the more gingery it will taste), peeled* and cut into small rounds a quarter-inch thick
  • 3 1/2 cups water
  • 2 cups sugar
  • Pinch of salt
  • Squeeze of orange slice
  • 1 liter tonic water (pref. Schweppes) 

 

Directions:

  1. In a medium saucepan, combine water and sugar.  Over medium-high heat stir until sugar is dissolved. 
  2. Add ginger slices and bring mixture to a boil
  3. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 5-7 minutes.  Watch so sugar does not caramelize.
  4. Turn heat off.  Mixture should be syrupy and fragrant.  Add a pinch of salt squirt of orange juice.
  5. Put lid on saucepan and allow to steep for 30 minutes to 1 hour
  6. To assemble drink:  
    1. For an individual drink:  Pour ginger syrup in a glass about a quarter way full, top with tonic water, then with ice
    2. For a whole bottle:  Use a decanter (for immediate use) or a hermetic bottle for later use (recommend within half an hour).  Add all of the syrup and top with tonic water slowly with a funnel. Chill in refrigerator. Enjoy with the spiced orange peels.

Spiced Orange Peels

Ingredients:

  • Peel of one orange, cut into strips
  • 2 cups water
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon ginger powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon chili powder
  • 1/8 teaspoon cumin
  • pinch of black pepper

 

Directions:

  1. In a pot of boiling water, simmer orange peel strips for 15 minutes.  Drain water and rinse with cold water.  Rinse again. Set aside.
  2. In a medium saucepan, combine water and sugar and heat on medium-high until sugar is dissolved and begins to boil (watch again carefully for caramelization).
  3. Lower heat to medium-low and add peels and simmer for 15-20 minutes until tender and gummy.
  4. Put on a baking sheet with a paper towel underneath to drain some of excess syrup off.
  5. While peels drain, mix remaining ingredients on a shallow plate with a fork.  Lay down parchment paper.
  6. Dip peels in sugar mixture with fork or fingers and dip on both sides.  Lay on parchment paper to dry 8-12 hours or until dried.

A Relationship like Lazarus and some Blood Orange-Rosemary Soda

I went to California for the week.  I bit my nails down to the quick. I started chewing Nicorette gum and I wore sunglasses to the point where my eyes couldn't adjust to being indoors.  I was a different person then. I'm a weed that grew past its season. Overgrown, lush.  The kind where you want to call it a forest, but it's too manic and frenzied in its excitement to bloom, it has no elegance to it.  I'm a hybrid of eagerness and stagnation, I am preserved in the dust motes of lazy Sundays where I am allowed to be by myself.  Alone.  Blissful in that time apart, I took root and began to create.  I bit my nails because I was nervous, nervous I would love it all.  

I stopped by the convenience shop at gate G in the airport and got myself a pack of gum and some magazines.  I tried to pretend I wasn't sweating, that my stomach didn't twist into braids of butterfly cocoons and that self-doubt of What if it's really over now?

It was my first time back in three months, to a town I never loved and in a house that never has enough light for me.  An antique rug and an outdoor kitchen, I had a different life when I moved into that house last October.  I even had a different life in December, when the wool was pulled from my eyes and I saw how crowded the shadows from the window blinds felt.  It was 65 degrees that winter and I had to excuse myself from our Christmas dinner at a restaurant in the heart of Balboa; I was sweating so much and I felt like I couldn't breathe. 

So I left.  And I returned three months later, with a five o'clock shadow and more forgiveness than I thought possible.

And when I came back, it felt wholesome and kind.  I cried until my nose bled when the dogs licked me until their tongues were dry.  I sat over the sink and tried to stop the bleeding, refusing to tilt my head back and meet Nolan's eyes.  To have him see me so weak.  I wanted to come back strong and instead I was bleeding.  We fell asleep at two that night, talking about where we went from there.  I was sandwiched between a collie and a coyote.  I fell asleep with the same howl of her forlorn call in my heart, hoping to be heard, saying, "I'm still here waiting."

For a week, I appreciated San Diego for the paradise it can be.  Picnics.  Whole foods deli section.  The beach.  Palm trees, windless nights, airplanes you mistook as shooting stars.  A Subway you ate at after some surgery or another.  Old friends, old coworkers.  A smoky gay bar that serves $2 well drinks at noon.  Curves, cracked sidewalks and a gym you used to have a membership at. We bought hand-braided bracelets and wore them on our ankles, promising to never take them off. "I like mine more than I thought I would." A pound of chicken that sat defrosting in the fridge for a week, useless because we ate out every day.  $5 kombucha on tap.  We went to the post office three times--once to mail my mom's birthday present, once to return an unwanted gift, and once to mail out postcards.

I wish you could be here!  I'm always thinking of you.

Nolan has small birthmarks that tan a little bit darker than the rest of his skin.  Small splotches that I could probably make a Rorschach analogy to and it wouldn't seem that contrived.  The whites of the insides of his fingers fit, curved, linked into mine.  And if there is a God, his design was so perfect, to craft our hands together in this way.  

It was good to come back to a home that missed me, where I could tell life went on without me.  It was comforting to know that the world didn't revolve around me.  That I had grown up in the last three months and I wouldn't allow myself to be as capricious as I chose to be before.  It was organic.  It was natural.  It was healthy for me to go back.

Organic.  Healthy.  Natural.  Words that inspired me this week to make a lighter fare.  My dad told me once he wants to see the sun set on every beach in the world.  I thought about that as my groggy eyes adjusted to waking up in the small beach tent one afternoon.  I saw red before I saw blue.  I was thirsty and I thought how good the small bubbles of carbonation would feel on my dry throat in that hot, hot sun.  I made some blood orange soda when I got home from my trip.  I added some rosemary to stay healthy, steeping it, pulling the magic from its veins.  I'll drink this batch the rest of the week and think of my time in California often.  Back to the beaches, back to my dogs, and back to my relationship--however small a miracle to come back from the dead like it has.

Blood Orange-Rosemary Soda

I found those bottles at Michael's.  Very tempted to bottle and sell to Press.

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cup fresh blood orange juice
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 3 sprigs rosemary
  • 24 oz club soda

Directions

  • In a small saucepan, combine juice and sugar and heat on medium-high, stirring constantly until sugar is dissolved.  
  • Allow to simmer until juice is reduced by half and is thick and syrupy
  • Allow to cool, then funnel into at least a 30 oz container
  • Fill remainder of container/bottle with club soda
  • Add rosemary
  • Refrigerate for at least half an hour
  • Enjoy, garnish with additional rosemary or with blood orange
  • Enjoy

A cake, a wall, and some dark magic.

Necromancy.  Dead magic.  The prophecy of the exhumed body.  Every time I bake, it feels like I'm communing with my past, a wayward child that's running too fast for his own feet.  Simple simmering, trying to remember the last time I just sat or ate something healthy.  Gentle boiling, trying to remember if my grandmother's name was Norma or Lily.  Patiently waiting, trying to remember when the last time I hugged someone.

This week it felt like a dark moon hung over San Antonio.  I felt a sort of reverse-gravity in the pit of my stomach.  The air was thinner, the sunlight hit asphalt in garish hues of motor oil that looked like blood.  Tasted it in my mouth.  I bit my lip too hard.  I bit my tongue more than once.  It made me feel shaky and I couldn't fall asleep, I kept hearing car alarms and wailing trains in the distance.  It used to be coyotes.

Necromancy.  When an ex-boyfriend comes back into your life and he isn't so much a ghost as he is a warm body.  A warm body that feels rotten and you can't quite place his presence anywhere.  Uncomfortable, the same sense of nausea you felt when you overheard at your grandmother's funeral, "The mortician did a good job with the make-up."  (Her name was Ruth).  He shouldn't be here in the new life.  

Necromancy.  The tangy smell of jam on burnt toast.  How easily we remember things through smell.  How some flowers smell like carrion and it attracts insects with hummingbird wings.  It all looks so perfect until you start to breathe.  I remember three smells from my childhood:  my mother's Dr. Pepper chapstick, the foam on the top of the Diet Cokes I'd pour for my dad, and hot cast iron with its burn crisps of old corn bread stuck on the edges.

This week I kicked the wall in my bathroom because I ran out of things to say.  I wasn't sorry for it.  I went to Home Depot and spend $17.  It's a large splotch of grey where my foot caved in.  I couldn't find the words to describe all the anger I had, built up over five years.  I broke a wall with my foot and there's still bits of plaster stuck to the sole of my shoe.  Every step is a little dustier, small motes of my anger trail after me onto the tile at work.  They settle into the hardwood floor of my apartment, into scratches where we pushed the couch on its side and it left long marks a half inch deep.  A nail that stuck out of the leg, bent at an angle. "It could have poked your eye out."

This week I brought memories back to life, a form of magic through baking.  The shamanism of sense memory and mixing bowls.  The smell of old fruit, blackberries I picked from bramble on my uncle's farm.  Burnt cornbread on the stovetop to cool.  A large glass of Diet Coke that hisses as the carbonation dies.  I used to shuck the corn for dinner, put the silk in a Wal-mart plastic bag for the chickens.  I made a cake with these kind of memories, this brand of necromancy.

Cornmeal Cake with Sweet Corn Topping and Quick Berry Jam

Ingredients for the Cake:

  • 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 
  • 1/2 cup yellow cornmeal 
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder 
  • 1 teaspoon salt 
  • 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, and 1/4 cup for sprinkling 
  • 1/2 cup buttermilk 
  • 2 large eggs 
  • 7 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus some to grease skillet

Ingredients for the Sweet Corn Topping:

  • 2 cups heavy cream
  • 2 ears of corn, kernels cut and cobs whole
  • 1/4 cup confectioner's sugar
  • 2 teaspoon vanilla

Ingredients for the Quick Berry Jam

  • 1 pint blackberries
  • 1 pint raspberries
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 tablespoons clover honey
  • 1 lemon, zested and juiced
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried lavender
  • Sachet of gelatin 
  • pinch of salt

Directions:

  1. The night before, heat cream and corn kernels and cob in a saucepan.  Allow to simmer for four minutes.  Let steep overnight.
  2. Further, make the jam by macerating berries in sugar and honey and allowing to stand in a saucepan for ten minutes.  
  3. Bring mixture to a simmer, berries will break and slowly release their juices.  Allow to simmer for 12 minutes.
  4. Add lemon juice and zest and lavender.  Stir gentle and continue to simmer. 
  5. In a small bowl, pour in gelatin.  Add 2 tablespoons of water to gelatin and allow to bloom for six minutes.  Once stiffened, spoon into jam and stir gently to break down the bloom.  
  6. Take off heat and allow to rest for several minutes (it will start to thicken).  When a little cooled, place in a heatproof container and refrigerate overnight.   
  7. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Butter a 10-inch cast iron skillet and set aside. 
  8. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, and 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar.
  9. In another bowl, whisk together buttermilk, eggs, and melted butter. 
  10. Pour over flour mixture, whisking to combine.
  11. Pour batter into skillet and bake 45 minutes on middle rack

  12. While cake bakes, strain cream mixture into the bowl of a stand mixer.  Discard corn remnants.  Whip cream on medium-high until peaks form.  Add remaining topping ingredients.  Set aside.

  13. Allow cake to cool and then invert. 

  14. Assemble cake by adding a layer of jam, and top with the whipped cream mixture.

  15. Think about home while eating it and enjoy.

I want to finally give a shout-out to Kristyn over at Laite Atelier for no other reason than she has been a wonderful, interesting, and talented person I met this week.  

    Avoiding the Red Cliche

    Most things come easily to me, things you wouldn't expect from a boy with no discernible talent.  Things like baseball, calculus, forgiveness never came easy to me, but love did.  Love in the carnal sense, love in the fictional sense.  Love in the sense of letting go, love in the sense of finding yourself.  Love in the sense of that ever-present gnaw at the pit of your stomach that registers in the mind as I am responsible for someone else's happiness. Love has come easily to me since birth.  I love my mother in an almost manic sense, an almost Oedipal obsession with my desire to make her smile.  In kindergarten, I kissed a girl named Alex's hand when she reached out to grab a colored pencil, I thought I was gentlemanly and adult of me.  Years of expansive love bloomed in me as I began to daydream of boyfriends and how exotic the word fiancé sounded, with it's accented e and promise of a future with someone else.  With each boyfriend, there was a breakup, and with each breakup, there was some promise of next time, next time, next time.  I found Nolan during one of those next times.  During my return to Italy, when we were both a little bruised, both a little cut up and the vinegar kisses of a stranger felt like when soap gets in a hangnail.  But, underneath all of that, once we stripped down and opened up, there was love.

    It was raw and passionate, it left me heady in the perfumed 10x8 dorm room where the heat was on and a blizzard blew through Pittsburgh one night in January.

    It was lazy, falling asleep with a bucket of chicken during XLV.

    It was chaotic in the sense of never having an ending, never knowing the dates of anything important, throwing shoes and his grandmother's dishes when I got too angry and forgot to say, "I'm sorry."

    But I was never sorry, never sorry for loving someone so ferociously and tender.  I'd lick the wounds I had created and then blame the rust-taste in my wolf mouth on his laziness, his determination to let our love fade away.  It was raw and passionate, it was lazy and chaotic.  And somehow love became this little succulent, never needing watered, collecting dust on the windowsill, timid in its approach to life.  Our love had a geophyte approach to sustainability, fatty and tuberous, holding onto any love that existed when life got barren and dry. When it got hard to come by, when it couldn't be found in the moonlight nor with a dowsing rod, broken off from a backyard apple tree when the Santa Anas made us unbearable to one another.

    Since I left for Texas, we fell in love again--hard and fast, when the bones were most brittle.  An apologetic love where conversations often ended in "How did it get like this?"  We are finding our way back to the frenzied love of when I was 19, and slowly those sour wounds heal when they're exposed to air.  I wanted to celebrate this love for Valentine's Day and forget all the other four years and the bullshit we put one another through. I wanted to celebrate this love in boxes, small tins of love that overpowered Nolan for Valentine's Day.  I wanted to remind him what home could feel like.  I wanted to remind him what love could feel like, because our house in San Diego was big by San Diego standards, and it could creak too loud when you're lonely.  I made him dinner, cakes and bread, and shipped it to him to have for Valentine's Day with a movie, so it felt like a date tonight.

    I love you.

    The menu for Nolan's Valentine's dinner

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    Pasta out to dry

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    food343V5204

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    Chocolate Cake with a Marzipan Heart

    A chocolate cake with a marzipan heart

    Bacon Salt and Popcorn

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    homemade candy bars

    Homemade Candy Bars

    Homemade candy bars

    Homemade Candy Bars

    “He shall never know I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same.”

     


    Roasted Beet Pasta

    Ingredients:

    • 2 large-sized beets
    • 3 whole eggs + 1 egg yolk
    • 1 tablespoon olive oil
    • 1 tablespoon salt
    • 1 teaspoon lemon zest (optional)
    • 6+ cups flour

    Directions:

    1. Preheat oven to 450
    2. While oven is preheating, peel beets and wrap in foil, place on baking tray.  When oven is ready, roast for 40 minutes.
    3. Remove from oven and allow to cool for a few minutes, unwrapping so steam can release
    4. Cut into large chunks.
    5. In a large food processor (6 cups or more), throw in beets, eggs and yolk, olive oil, and salt (and optional zest).  Puree until smooth
    6. In a stand mixer, combine puree and three cups of flour using the paddle attachment.  When dough begins to form, switch to dough hook and continue to mix, adding in last three cups of flour, one at a time, until a proper dough forms
    7. Remove from bowl onto a floured work surface (i prefer marble for pasta-making) and knead for 7 minutes or until is elastic
    8. Keeping dough floured, cut into eighths and lay plastic wrap on sections you are not going to use.
    9. Use your pasta machine's directions for thick noodles, and dry.
    10. Enjoy with a vinaigrette and parmesan!

    Bacon Salt

    Ingredients:

    • 5-6 strips of bacon
    • 1/2 cup sea salt (preferably a larger crystal)
    • 1 tablespoon brown sugar
    • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

    Directions:

    1. Fry bacon on a skillet until extra-crispy
    2. Put on a plate lined with paper towels and allow to cool, blotting excess grease
    3. In a food processor, combine all ingredients and pulse until combined.  Do not over-pulse, as it can result in fats in bacon to liquify.
    4. Enjoy over popcorn, with potatoes, or be creative!

    Handcrafted Candy Bars

    There is no real recipe for a basic candy bar.  I used some of my mother's recipes, which use more specialized chocolate and techniques, but the instructions I have below can be practiced even with chocolate chips. From here, you can personalize them and make them your own, even including honeys, spices, herbs, salts, and even homemade nut butters!  But, I would start here for an intro into confectionery.

    Before you begin, use a ratio of 3 oz per candy bar, so you have some room for leeway with sticking to the bowl, the mold, and your spatula.  From here, you can cut and halve, mix chocolates together and multiply easily.  I particularly like mixing white chocolate and a milkier, lighter chocolate.  When you have decided how you would like to flavor your chocolate, measure out how much you will need.  Then, take away about 30% of that amount and set aside (this will be your "seed chocolate", a step for this pseudo-tempering.  It is necessary so your chocolate doesn't turn grey when cooled).

    Prepare any mold you may be using.  I always use a light olive oil cooking spray and then wipe off the excess with a paper towel.

    In a microwave-safe bowl, combine your remaining chocolates and microwave on HIGH for 20 seconds.  Take out and stir.  Put back in for another 20 seconds and repeat this process until all chocolate is silky smooth and easy to stir.

    Add remaining chocolate and continue to stir.  The heat from the melted chocolate should melt remaining chocolate.

    Add any add-ins and pour into mold and smooth out with a rubber spatula.  Allow to cool for at least half an hour in the fridge before unmolding.  Package however you want (I went a little far with homemade packaging I designed and printed on special paper, but basic foil will do). Store in a cool place, or the fridge.

    Other recipes used: For the cake (marzipan inspiration here)/  For the hot chocolate mix /  For the marshmallows / For the bread.

    A Greyhound Through Hill Country

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    It was hard to find a comfortable position.  I'm long-limbed and can never stay still for long.  I wrapped my body around an old leather jacket and road the north-bound Greyhound bus to Dallas last week.  It gave me a reason to see Nolan, the first time in three weeks.  Three weeks that quantified into a lifetime of changing perspectives and the resultant, nagging question of why did i do this?

    The bus left at seven and pulled in by midnight.  We sat in traffic for 45 minutes, and I read articles about the I Ching and cancer.  My eyes grew dryer with every mile marker and I had a pair of glasses tucked into the backseat pocket.  It was longer than I thought five hours could be, and the only way I could gauge that kind of time was San Diego to Phoenix, from San Diego to Las Vegas, from San Diego to the first gas station we stopped at the buy water and a burger on our way to El Paso for the night.  All my starting points were from that Southern California town.  And many of my ending points, too.

    By the end of my time in California, I was no longer many things.  I was no longer alone, no longer exciting, no longer young and naive and studious.  No longer a law student, no longer confident, no longer the faltering idea of being someone else.  I was myself and I have sacrificed for that kind of beginning, but I had to go to Dallas and see if it was all worth it.  To look the wolf in the eyes at night and see if it howls the same as you howled inside.  When it wasn't so perfect, when it was a shaggy puddle of old love notes that got ripped to shreds in an old cardboard box.

    We met at the station and a male prostitute asked where I was going.  It was pitch-dark and silent in the city, and in the distance you saw how expansive Dallas was.  We passed office buildings that still had lights on and it seemed we found ourselves in another city, another few moments of exploration.  We got a hotel for the night, a little room with a queen-sized bed and a TV that was screwed into the dresser.  The fridge motor ran louder than my breathing and my body, naturally nestled into Nolan's, fell into the rhythm of his breathing.

    And for two days, I felt whole.  In a way I hadn't before.  Longer than the three-week span of living on my own.  Longer than maybe a year or two.  It was no longer a question of "How will we survive?", but a question of when will the vast gap between us close itself?  Inside you can fill barbecue joints, the Grand Canyon, and the biggest little city in the world.   There is a five year age gap and the gaps in our teeth and a gap between my thighs because I'm only eating for one.  There are memories I think I forgot and a tenderness in our words and fingertips that came out of the synapses of our mind, our fight or flight response, our relationship survivalism.

    And we couldn't even kiss goodbye because we're in an unfamiliar town.  We hesitated, standing at terminal five of the Dallas greyhound, my bag on my shoulder and a headphone in one year.  I looked him in the eye and said, "I'll see you soon."

    Places to visit in Dallas....Social House / Weekend Coffee / TENOVERSIX / White Elephant