i drove out of the desert yesterday and didn’t settle down until i saw grass. i didn’t need grass, but that was when i finally settled. i thought maybe the dusty smell of desert now belonged to a place in time: if i go back to take a whiff, it could fill me with sensations specific to the moment i’d just left behind. i could visit us there sometime.

Today my home needs new brake pads and i am stuck in a strip mall full of loud machinery on the only bench i could find within a mile of the auto shop. It’s a bus stop next to six lanes of traffic and some kind of construction separate from the other machine noises. The desert is long gone.

Though now here has arrived a mourning dove, unfamiliar yet identifiable, hopping over a curb toward some crumbs. There you are: pointing out birds and helping me solve their puzzles, find their names. i don’t know where your body is now but i can see you grinning. And here i am, far from that moment we left. Here i am, cheesing right back.