You can let it go

It’s been a little while. Many things. Pretend this is a loving and quickly jotted email. Pretend these are the bullet points.

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My cousin came to visit a couple weeks ago and it was nice to have someone visit the desert who immediately loved it here, like I did when I first came. No It’s so brown, no I don’t get it, no There’s not a lot to do.

We sat outside at dusk each night and listened to the hawks and watched the bats fly dizzy. I dug out my binoculars and we took turns trying to figure out what was making a bright light in the distance.

On our last night we both noticed what looked like an owl on the side of the mountain. We looked with our naked eyes and then with the binoculars and by the time it was almost completely dark we realized we were staring at an owl-shaped rock.

And then just before we went inside, it took flight.

Full owl.

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I visited T up in Seattle last week. We took his sailboat out and I cried almost every day I was there. Once at a diner, twice in his truck, and every night he sat and played the guitar before we went to sleep. He asked me the right questions and switched to happier songs when I needed them. He let me put my feet on the guitar, no problem. I didn’t feel embarrassed. We slept in different rooms. He made us two giant mugs of perfect coffee each morning and we watched a lot of soccer and ate a lot of pizza and sat on bar stools for hours him not drinking like we did when we first met. I told him how I felt. He told me how he felt. They weren’t the same. We agreed to swim with great white sharks together.

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I said in a voice note to M yesterday that I feel like an open wound right now. She said something brilliant and kind back about how good it feels to be cared about by me. It was stitches.

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Something on the boat broke while we were sailing. I had to steer it while T stood on the bow. I fell and then we hit big waves and I watched him like I’ve never watched anyone before. When it settled again and he came down to where I was he told me I did a good job and I said I almost lost you overboard! and he said No, you did a good job and why was that so hard for almost everyone else? How come?

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Last night I was yelling at the universe and N said You’re yelling at the universe, babe and I got it. When I walked home a few minutes later an owl flew inches above my head, no second guessing.

A bobcat came up to my window this afternoon. We stared at each other for a while. He looked hot and skinny and tired.

The desert in summer is exhausted, all of us.

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I accidentally lied last time. Said I never quite fit in this container or something like that. But I do.

Eight years ago I cast a kind of spell by saying I wanted to displace myself and write about it. I just keep finding more people and homes.

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Have you heard Harry Style’s song “Matilda”? Should be illegal.

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There’s no explaining what creosote smells like after it rains or what it means to have a friend say “Look!” and then catch the second half of lightning hitting at night across an open desert or how the sun turns pink then red here in a way I feel like I made up when I was six or seven.

You’d have to be here all the time.

I wish you were here all the time.

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A bird just flew to my feet on the coffee table for water. The bowl is put away and he knows I’ll go get it for him.

I used to think that happiness would come at one time or in one way and I wasn’t right but I also wasn’t wrong, you know?

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Pretend I remembered everything I forgot to tell you.

xo

Amanda