The Sky

I drank the sky, the whispers of clouds, the ruler-straight contrails leading to and from Denver International Airport now five minutes behind, but mostly just the brilliant blue of the sky. There really isn’t much sky in Los Angeles. It’s brown and hazy and muted or flat and grey. The San Gabriel Mountains are just a brown smudge to the north, not like the dark, jagged rise of the Rockies here in the east. So I stared out the window of the car of the friend who had provided the means for my escape, stared at nothing and everything and smiled.

We slept in, the golden sun streaming through his south facing window. We slept in anyway and cuddled and found fun things for which words are not needed. I took a blistering hot shower and tracked him downstairs to the smell of cooking eggs and sausages. In the afternoon, I sat on the couch in the living room, occasionally looking up at the sky and watching the honking geese pass. We went to the mall parking lot and he taught me how to drive a stick shift. I only managed to stall half a dozen times (at least) before starting to figure it out.

Today is Christmas Eve and I found an early email from my mother waiting for me. She detailed the normal Christmas Eve goings on, her five-meat chilli in the crock pot, cinnamon rolls rising and ready to bake, family coming over later, her strange little cat acting strange. “I miss you,” she wrote. I miss her too.

But at least I’m not in Los Angeles.