This is how we say goodbye.

The comfort of ritual. A circular incision. Twisting the halves out and away, removing each pit with a swift thwack of blade. Scraping avocado, unripe, impossibly green into the Pyrex bowl you bought me for the birthday I never thought I’d live to see. Drag of fork, swimming everything smooth.

Half the jalapeno and double the lime. Cutting them lengthwise, like you taught me, to maximize the juice and minimize the mess left on my hands. You know how I get about my hands.

Shrugging garlic out of its papery jacket with thumbs and forefingers. Mincing it fine, and finer. Half a sweet white onion, because you’re not crazy about red, especially raw. Remembering how my mother used to dice onions while she cried and I was never sure about the cause/effect of the whole situation.  

Sunlight through the kitchen window glitzing the puddled seeds and messy drool of one vine-ripened tomato. Half a red bell pepper. The trick is the surprise crunch. A contrast of textures. Don’t you know, a mouth can only handle so much soft?

Salt and pepper to taste. A pinch of hot chili powder, stirring everything together until even I have to admit it’s enough. It’s done.

There’s nothing more to do.

-b

Open Letter Series: #7

To the concept of brunch:

First of all, well played. Forefront in the hearts and minds of hipsters lined around the block, you have become a staple. And for good reason. You don't discriminate, strictly asserting what belongs on your plates. You are the only place dense, wine-soaked Italian desserts peacefully coexist next to platters of meat and cheese, next to “You know, that one egg and sausage thing?” Chicken and waffles with a side of whatever-the-hell-that-is, or a grilled cheese sandwich with a poached egg and bacon. And you’re not all harsh and hissing consonants like breakfast. You fill my mouth so pleasantly with that deep vowel, evoking images of comfort the second you leave my lips. Spinach dip, pastries, hashbrown casserole, goat cheese and fig crackers. Plates passed from hand to hand, a gathering of friends who might otherwise be suffering quiet and lonesome hangovers.

Speaking of hangovers. Thank you for starting at a reasonable time. I know you’ve seen it. The groggy not-quite-hungover-maybe-still-drunk stumbling, the being scooped up and deposited safely at a corner booth, you bunch of fucking goobers. Or maybe a house where you keep the screen door shut and admire the flowers. Or a house where you don’t look the dog in the eyes and the carpet swallows your bare feet up to the ankles, practically.

Time for some real talk, brunch. If you didn’t intend to last for 12 hours why did you partner up with champagne? I mean mimosas. I mean just a splash of orange juice. For color. You make it so easy to get lost in the pop and sparkle, everything fuzzy around the edges like bubbles rushing to the surface, like the cheekblush of one-or-six too many. But hey. We’ve all got our dragons to slay, sometimes twice, and it’s so much nicer with a drink in hand. A plate of Not Apples passed between friends and one of these nectarines... is not like the other. She prefers the crunch while I stick to the sweet. A muddled crush of berries muddying the stemware.

What if we didn’t have thumbs? What if I could drink lying down and not drown? What if we could be Real People living our Real Lives all the time and not think twice about what anyone else might think? Congruent realities. A drunken grocery store careening. A man shows me pictures of his weed plants like a proud father. Rattles off THC content and expected yields the way a parent might recite GPAs or sports stats. A girl searches for a word and I empty out the dictionary behind my teeth. Hours dissolve into the hold-this-feeling-hostage. A trickle of conversation into sedate quiet. The realization that no morning is infinite, but we can still go back for seconds and thirds.

Brunch. For every morning you’ve saved my life, you’ve probably tried to kill me twice, but I can’t seem to hold a grudge. You make the pursuit of happiness seem so much simpler, time becoming sticky even as it gathers speed. The memories we might not remember in the morning, and I guess all of this is to say thank you. Thank you for the sustenance. For food and friends. For I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes. Sometimes love is a recliner chair and my fingers tangling astrology, spinning starscripts from the internet interface. Sometimes love is a chicken salad sandwich. Or a movie I’ve seen too many times but you humor me anyways.

But also, poached eggs on everything. Am I right?

-b

California, I'm Coming Home

Hello dream weavers. It’s been a minute, right? Tonight I’m sitting cross-legged in the bedroom where I’ve spent the last four years, with the yellow walls, and the always open windows where That Cat can come and go, scaling the lilac bushes. In less than two months there will be a new body in this room, and I will be magically somewhere else. Everything different the way everything has been different before, but in a new way.

I will have survived a 20 hour drive with a sedated hellbeast in a silly clown car with no air conditioning. My worldly possessions: 3-5 boxes, one guitar, one longboard, as many houseplants as I can safely transport, the table my grandfather built, the blanket I don’t sleep without. Ideally. I’ll have attended two mandatory orientations, met my cohort, enrolled in a publishing internship. I’ll know my faculty’s handshakes, and the way they pronounce their vowels. Who clips their consonants, who lets their language drawl and dribble.

Today I held my graduate course catalog in my hands for the first time, and those 8 pages (printed double sided) made everything somehow real. This fall I’ll live in San Diego. I’ll go to school in San Diego. When I am lonely I’ll drive to my grandparents’ house, and sit next to the pool, and watch the sun set over a desertscape. I’ll study Queer Texts & Contexts, or the Literature of Terrorism, or Living Writers in coffee shops, and cafes and parks. Sunshine. There will be enough sunshine to make a body appreciate rain. For so long now I thought it had to be the other way around, and maybe for a while it did.

A few weeks ago, sitting with a friend sipping a Mint Thing, which is a real thing concocted from coffee ice cubes, cold brew, cream, magic and muddled mint. The red double-decker bus and the plastic tarping still erected to protect us from the cold, even though the sun was shining that day. How he told me it’s ok to want to be ok, and that’s a hard thing to learn. How a body can become addicted to anything, even tragedy. How we can all write from the rain for as long as we need to, but there’s so much more to us than that.

This last week I’ve been feeling frenetic and raw. The missing takes me by the throat while driving to work. Grocery shopping. Driving from work. Brushing my teeth. It doubles me over while I’m running. The sort of ache that wakes me up at 1am, heart racing so I beg it to stop, stop, stop, please stop and don’t know if I’m talking about the persistent beat, or the thing that causes it.

I tell my friend, who gives the best hugs and loves the color purple, I started this blog so the people I care about would know I’m still alive. The ritual of it keeping me grounded: Thursdays for processing and feelings, Sundays to document hilarious antics. The things coming out of me as true as I could allow. The voice that I discovered something I fell in love with. Reading it now, that wry self-deprecation trying so hard to mask the lonely... I love that desperate, often messy, occasionally insightful human beast. I hope you do too.

I’m leaving this here as a reminder to myself, as a reminder to you, because everything is about to be different the way everything has been different before, but in a new way. Even through the breaking, somewhere at the center of me is a smoothround stone. It is calm, and still, and perfect.

I text the wizard when I feel like I’ve tricked myself into a drowning tank, and I can’t shake the chains I locked around my own wrists and ankles. She says Make a list of the things you’re grateful for. Today I’m grateful for my sock collection, and how I’ve managed to keep them mostly matching for the better part of a year. I’m grateful for pork chops I can eat with my bare hands while sitting in traffic on a long commute. For a body that can run and jump and move, not without pain but despite it. I’m grateful for words; the places they’ve taken me and the places we’ve yet to go together. I’m grateful for That Cat, curled up sleeping so small and warm, because keeping me awake all night is exhausting work.

Here’s to the hilarious antics, and the thoughtful reflections. Soon I’ll be doing this in a new city. I hope you’ll stay with me.

Stay with me?

All my love, you bunch of creeps.

-b