Summer Skin Reflections on a Texas Night--Written Too Long Ago, Too Soon Ago

This place is steeped in memories.

It has been eight months since I've been home and meager as they may seem, I realize that I might as well have lived whole lifetimes in between them.

I climb up to my roof and the rough tiles feel familiar and gritty like the hardened souls of my childhood feet, caked with remnants from this cul-de-sac street. I bring up a single clove cigarette, a pack of matches, and my Ipod, then settle on an obscure crook of my house. The air is hot and wet, expected in summer, but foreign and exotic in my lungs. I can't help picturing the fragrances of Havana and fragile love stories blown about by the Caribbean wind.

It's nighttime, the most ambiguous time here. One could imagine themselves almost anywhere in the darkness, but my mind knows the place well. It is unable to forget, with the palm tree silhouettes framing the vista, and always, always the hot, wet air.

My friend and I used to lay up here because with the sun so close and only rooftops in our presence, we could pretend we were in the midst of a sea-washed California sunset. And on a cold night in December, we could almost see the bare trees as the north, almost touch the idea that the space in between them, so lyrically fogged, belonged to the distances of Connecticut woods. All those times spent dreaming and it is reality that now seems so elusive, the phantom vision in the night. All those dying days promised some joy we couldn't quite speak and now I have crossed the country and back and the world seems small to me.

In this tepid climate, I'm always reminded of Death Cab, the steady base, the stagnant voice, the humid chords and then the erratic, fiery explosion of sound--a loose spark in the heat of the night.

I light my clove, as if off of that lone loose spark. I've smoked them up north, where I tell people they taste like Christmas, but here they are spiced, aromatic with the Arabian feel of sun and sweat and exotic plants. It's funny how even a taste can change with climate and here on the rooftop, near the bamboo and Texas pines, I can't help but picture trees with orange-like fruit, as though the cloves were picked from its leaves. It must be a manipulated vision spurred by the painted sun tipping over the edge of the carton of Bali Hais I used to have up here.

The glowing org continues to crackle as the finger picking of "Bixby Canyon Bridge" enters my head, disguised as a blue-lined song when truly each lyric is a month of my past life. And with my reluctant beads of perspiration, the smell of my tanned skin wasted and unseen in the warm darkness, I begin to see it: this is where I first fell in love.

It was in this place, that felt so unlike me, that I first fell in love with lives I did not yet lead. I began a long time ago, before I fathomed rooftops and clove cigarettes and grey fabric realities I would come to claim. I began with the dreaming. I am certain now that I will end with it as well.