The summer after the first year of college is the first moment you are given to catch your breath. A few luxurious days go by where you lay around watching Netflix, sleeping till noon, and eating all the good food a college meal plan deprived you of. But when you finally pull yourself out of bed and contemplate becoming a real person again, you find yourself a little off balance without your friends who you grew accustomed to spending every waking moment with.
You can’t walk down the hall to eat peanut butter and honey sandwiches together at 1 a.m. to take a break from studying. You eat meals alone, without your friends gathered around you still discussing the relatability of ancient texts from this morning’s hum lecture. So you text them, tell them you miss them and discuss summer plans, but online communications, but virtual communication sometimes just accentuates how lonely you actually are.
I wrote this poem for my best friend, who is tucked away in an oasis in the Tucson desert for the summer.
JAVA HOUSE PLAYS THE TALKING HEADS
for Arie
The morning I left Portland
it was raining.
We slid into summer with
me hauling a bloated suitcase to the Midwest,
you leaning your head heavy against the blue
of a house I want to paint yellow.
Iowa City is swollen and infected with heat.
At night, I peel my damp shirt
and watch moths make shadows under the lampshades
and dawn fills the room before the sweat finally gives.
You tell me July is monsoon season
and I envision the bamboo forest in your backyard
as a billowing green awning under which you
flip your tarot cards,
your intuition sharpened by
a desert wash that sends every crawling thing
back into the earth.
I am chewing dried mango on the curb
outside the Java House
wishing I was with you
on the navel of Tucson bedrock,
jars of orange juice and vodka
clinking in our bags,
walking among saguaro forests and satellite fields,
fishhook and brittlebush,
all silent and reposed
before the prick of lightning.
But you are there
and I am here
and in the curved shoulder of the country
our friends are taking the 75 to work
eating pasta for the third night in a row
and the house is still blue
and the ants have taken to the honey in the cupboard
and it’s raining
and Portland is same as it ever was.
