Day One Out

In a secret place. Left my cocoon early and a nice man, a cousin, he lifted my 150 lbs of luggage to my room. It was not as terrifying in daylight. It was beautiful. We walked the neighborhood and then he left me, my cousin, and my eyes flooded with tears.

And I slept. And I woke. And alone, no longer tethered to another human, my fears dissipated. I left and found the Chinese-British-American writer in his fatigues and his scarf and the t-shirt and the New York speed and we wandered lost thanks to other people’s directions.

Lunch was fine. He told me about borders and fears and about the holiest sites and the biggest guns and Christians, he felt, were experiencing something different. He asked me more than once, “are you Orthodox? You think like an orthodox.” No. Not an orthodox. A thinker.

We ate like ten mini courses and then poof, Mr. America was gone and I was asleep again and then awake again and I did all the growing up I had lost in returning to the womb all over again.

And then a hunt for a sim card. And then a nice man, a Russian on her computer, a drunk with a dreamcatcher tattoo and eyes of a holy man. The grocery store gave me minutes, then back to the nice man, a troll on first glance, a mensch down deep. He filled my cell phone with minutes and the drunk sage looked at me with eyes that filled my heart with love.

He was, I was sure, a prophet gone astray. There were others like him, the sunburnt crazy claiming to be the messiah, perched cross-legged in Jesus clothes on the street corner. He had a following, tourists deeply engaged in spiritual exploration. It could be Boulder, this city.

And then I was lost, and then a cabbie, half-Hungarian, half-Austrian, he took me to my job and I thought one place was it, the fancy printing press lounge, but it was the room behind it. And there, in the backroom, I saw my own family only taller and darker and more deterred by lacking possibility.

This secret city is crumbling at the seams. My back is too. We are relics of a time undone. Now I am home. I ate dinner with the film students from Mexico, France and Canada and three locals. One girl almost cried over wearing the same outfit accidentally on her second date.

I left. The food was churning inside of me. I am home.