25. naming her

written 7 months and 11 days after

In August of 2019, I came home from a writing residency in Guadalajara, Mexico.

My sweet man picked me up from the airport and marvelled at my tan. I told him about the food that I had eaten, rhapsodizing about these scallops in a vanilla bean sauce that I had eaten at Alcalde.

“It sounds so good!” he exclaimed.

I told him about the pale, perfectly clear jade green of the water that was so warm, sometimes it felt like a bath. I told him about the hermit crabs that paused their traffic when you set your foot onto the sand. I told him about the way, up in the mountains at the residency, every afternoon around one or two p.m. it rained so heavily that it sounded like anger.