Wow

If I saw you in Seattle, I saw you in Seattle. We hugged and you heard my stomach boil. I didn't stop eating up there. The power to climb all those hills came from meals on top of meals. No crumbs were wasted entertaining sea gulls. Please don't feed those birds anything. They're already the size of helicopters. One of them got close to my face on a pier railing, and I offered it my wallet. Empty calories!

I read some stories to people in a lounge. A pipe above me dripped on my jeans. It even rains indoors in Seattle. The wet weather got into my coat and made the button a dog chewed on last year start stinking again.

I wore my new scarf. I appeared to be wearing a neck brace. People weren't having it. They didn't say anything, but the looks! At least on the test run in Kansas City, someone on the street was helpful and said, "Are you fucking kidding me?!"

You must remember, though, that in college I knit a Superman sweater complete with cape and wore the thing out shopping. I was hopeful on the size. My roommate used to call it "chub-n-tight" when men wore a size too small. We were amorous of such men. I tried to be one myself. I see pictures now, and I don't know who I'm looking at. In the middle of that phase, Josh found me.

Two weeks ago, we took a ferry to an island near Seattle to watch rich people in their nature preserve of mansions and beaches. On one of the beaches there was a sign warning about toxic mollusks. There were illustrations of the shells to beware. I saw a million crab claws sticking out of the sand. The only whole crabs I saw where on ice in the market. I made Josh consider the water out the market windows. He said, "I wish we had windows like this at home." Water is water everywhere, I guess. Call me easy to please, but I couldn't get enough of that dark blue water. All I could say was, "Wow."

Another surprise. I've discovered the truth about my upstairs neighbors and all the noise they make. Turns out the second floor is a forest. The trees harbor wolves. When the boyfriend leaves for work every morning, the girlfriend goes about her own work cutting down each tree and burning the wood to draw out the wolves. Next comes the fighting and the canine crying. The scratching. The screaming. Folk music masks the murder. The girlfriend kills all the wolves. The boyfriend arrives home and is pleased. He and the girlfriend celebrate all night by linking arms and legs. They chew on bones and laugh. I look out the window to see if anyone has fallen on the ice. Nothing. The forest regenerates in the night.

Down here, I write. My myth about it shrinks. It's not a conversation if I know I'm talking to myself, so I pretend I'm talking to you.