The last time I made a trip across the country and was about to begin the journey back home, James laughed to himself as he pulled my luggage through the empty cabline in the middle of the night.
“What’s so funny?”
Although I was used to him cracking jokes at this point in the ritual to keep things from getting too terrible and hopeless, my question was still in earnest. But it wasn’t a joke.
“This green bag — it’s funny — it’s become so important to our relationship.”
It was no joke, but he was right; it’s funny. Maybe not so ha-ha funny. Maybe a little.
This time around, as I fly over the three legs of Tampa Bay, I can’t help but think this green bag is more important to our relationship than ever — that this is the most important trip I’ve ever taken. After all, this is the last time I will fly over these bridges knowing they lead to places I call home.
And like he said, if nothing else, after this trip, we’ll know if nothing has changed. I know I packed my bag the same.
// May2013
Both of our eyes glazed as I wondered what the “person” of a glacier fragment is and as he passed through a constellation of memory to find his iceberg.
”They’re unbelievable. You wouldn’t believe how much of them you can’t see. It’s actually like an island.”
I imagined girls lounging on the shore of the ice island, kids making crystal castles, a lifeguard surveying the spanse of the nearly frozen abyss. And there he was, on a cruise ship in what was then one of the most untouched places on Earth, standing in a cloud of his own breath, completely enamored with the colossal mass of ancient ice.
”That was the best part of the cruise,” he said through a faraway happiness.
That was a long time ago; but sometimes when I am awoken by the sunrise, I see him sleeping in a tawny glow, curled in floral bedsheets, and think: I am lying in bed with probably the only person who will ever tell me a sentimental story about a big block of ice.
And I don’t know if it’s going to work out, but eight months later I still feel enamored, I still feel that there is so much for us to find out about each other — a whole island underwater.
In my corner of the world, at least, it’s midnight, the first of May — wet and bright and fully in Spring — and I have turned off all my alarms with the direct intent to sleep for weeks. What a feeling!
// May2013
29 flat in the Midnight Fun Run! Pretty good for not sleeping more than three hours a night for the past two weeks lol. Very happy with my first 5k race! Great end to a great year :)
//Apr2013
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