A Californian Dream

There are so many things I am not allowed to tell you: I don’t like the way you wrap your towel around your body, the way your voice changes when you are about to say something serious, your eyes when you see in my eyes that I don’t love you.

Last summer when we walked the streets for hours proclaiming our happiness, listening to the noise from the side road and yet still hearing each other breathe, we had no idea how all this, and love too, will ruin us.

If I had to choose one moment in time to relive over and over again, I’d choose any day from last June, when the only thing I was worried about was if you'd wear that dress I really liked.

You told me once how after we met you'd wake up every night and eat ice cream, too nervous to see me again, too excited not to. I was going to go back to Califrnia despite of what you migh have said and you knew that but you kept talking: a flood of talk.

Leaving,

without ever confessing to you that the day you cooked for me for the first time I was as nervous as you:

I remember seeing your back in the kitchen, chopping salad, drinking wine and searing tuna; I came over and wrapped my arms around you, wondering what life might be like if I stayed.

Driving,

down the west side with this image of you at home in your white satin dress; your first sip of mezcal without me there.

You hope that last summer wouldn’t be that special anymore because we’ll spend the rest of our summers together, you look at yourself in the mirror, you brush your hair before going to bed and you dream.

We are unaware of what time does to us and how much of it we’ve got left until we had become inconsolable – we follow strict plans and big dreams and we forget that we are allowed to go off the radar-

In capsized boats, gold river lit, I turn around and say:

‘Honey, I’m coming home.’