One day melds into the next. I sleep fitfully, wake late, write nothing for days on end. I stare at the screen, get up, get more coffee, fall asleep drinking coffee.
We walked into the hills three days ago, my gaze turned sullen inward. Ceanothus bloomed white by trailside and the scent of Boronia, hidden somewhere, rain not-yet-fallen and a craving at the top of my spine, and we found a place to sit.
The city spread below us. This is the prettiest city I have lived in, if I look at it in a certain light; granite peaks mantling murals, pupusas for sale next to the gay thrift store, signs advertising хлеб, the smell of poppy seeds and cologne. And I long for the creosote.
I long for the creosote, these days when the sun climbs in the sky, the espresso and boronia distracting me only a little. I burden my love by not talking about it. I carry it around in me instead.
We watched the sky for a while and then climbed again.
Wheeling overhead, two black forms: ravens. I stopped, watched them circle behind the eucalyptus. I lost them in the foliage for a moment, then one of them stepped from the brush not ten feet away from us. It sized us up. It looked us up and down. And then it jumped into the canyon, swooped, gained on a thermal and whirled above us again, and just as I was thinking to myself how pleased I was that it inadvertently chose a spot to alight where I had a good view, it landed again, closer to us this time.
We looked at each other for awhile, raven and man, and I felt something in myself release. “I think I got what I came for,” I said, and the bird followed us down into the city streets for a while.
Beautiful! Now back to my blog. (Gee, writing’s easy, ain’t it? Who said that about opening a vein?)
I read this first on my phone, and because of the one to few words per line - the way the phone breaks it up - it read just like a poem. Nice!