Solitaire

The plants in the dim upstairs pool room surprised me with their lack of atrophy, growing in the kind of space you expect to be decorated with the lingering fingers of Parliament, clouds and beer breath. I’ve been wrong before. This is life in the desert, and the landscape reminds me that I live in a state of patrolled vulnerability, open at every angle and fortified against the future. You were effortless, the solitaire of Albuquerque, and reminded me of an old dream, something like Dean and Sal. Something like a freight train into places that only exist on gas station postcards. Something like the sun falling low enough into the horizon, drunk on its fire, that you can’t remember if it’s dawn or dusk and you realize they are the same. The train never stops but I got off somewhere between Florida and The Black Hills (deadlands/badlands). You were soft, and asked for things with no thought of apology, a hand, a vast collection of sweaters on your 40th, and company in the sandy hours of fire before night. Time was slow and undisclosed, sitting under the bar library on a one-side booth, watching the room undress while we wait for them to call our names.