An excersize in red.

I miss the desert and it's wide streets. I miss spending hours running in place and then driving home to the smell of sweat and creosote. It's so beautiful with red dirt and Mediterranean palm trees. The frogs in the courtyard and creeping over 90 before 6:00 am. And all the mornings I woke up to kitty yawns and drank my coffee on the stairwell smoking illicit cigarettes that I had to pay $160 to banish all over again. But in the mornings in Arizona, looking over the blond rocks and small amphibians, slashing through my notebook in red Sharpie dictating every which way my life could go.

But I wouldn't rather be there now. Cause I wasn't kidding when I said "Home is where my Giant is." So all these white skies and wet leaves, the red brick that trades in the dirt and the lack of summer that saw me sleeping in a stolen hoodie every night in August, it's all home and it's where I belong. And I'll wait it out, the absence of kitty yawns, cause he feels more like home than anything else and it's only time. I've already traded in time and it's an easy choice when you know exactly who you want and why.

I go there sometimes. Close my eyes and smell the sweat and the creosote. I remember driving back from central Phoenix late at night and feeling the pull to drive to Roswell just to eat at that diner and then circle back all the way home. I walk through ruins here and spread roots through everything I touch. They split and turn cause they are of two minds.

I'm at home here, but every day I still miss the desert.