Home in Puzzle Pieces

When I’m sweaty, my legs peel off the seat like a band-aid. The inside of the car is black and the chairs are leather. So when I leave, sometimes, my sweat doesn’t. Miami in the summer is funny that way--disgusting and unbearable, until I run into my brother’s third grade science teacher at the gym and she recognizes me. 

I hate Miami in the summer until I stop at CVS for nail polish remover and spot my best friend walking through the door. There is something serendipitous about knowing Sara my whole life and seeing her while I run errands. After spending the last five months living in a stranger’s house, routine, sweat, and chance reunions feel like home. 

This stranger’s apartment was sour and uninviting. Each room smelled differently: the kitchen of detergent over bottom-feeder fish, the living room of microwaved leftovers, the bathroom of mold heated by a furnace. She covered her floor in small decorative rugs and dressers in trinket boxes. She would line up the boxes up like mini caskets…but the cemetery by the front door was the strangest, as she hid the house key in one of the boxes. Getting out of there in a rush was like playing the Shell Game on a shot clock. 

At night, though, my room smelled of oranges. Maria, my roommate, and I avoided being home as much as we could. But, at the end of the day, we would tip toe out of our shoebox room, over patterned carpet until reaching the kitchen’s blue tile. We wore our matching navy pajamas like costumes. And we giggled like little girls at a sleepover, careful not to wake the parents but thrilled by our act of rebellion. Then we rushed back over creaky wood, past a tall ceramic vase, and by photographs of a stranger’s lifetime, to peel sumo oranges over our trash can. Miami in the summer is my messy orange with a friend in a stranger’s house--the juice can make my hands sticky and the pith can hide under my nails, but for now this orange and this company are my favorite part of the day. 

Miami in the summer feels like the big crush I had seven years ago on a boy who did not know me. But, still, I would go to the gym each afternoon wondering if he was working at that hour because just his glance made my world slow. This city in the summer feels the way I do when he looks at me now--like I’m swimming in the rain and underwater everything is quiet, like there is a man in the world who lets me forget the feeling of a door handle and makes loving feel like a selfish choice. 

There are few absolutes by which I live:

1. Who we love should be a choice made selfishly.

2. Don’t shower during a storm. 

3. It is possible to forgive without forgetting. 

4. Give firm handshakes. 

5. When walking with a full glass, don’t look down. 

The other day I sat in the car with this man, who I feel I’ve known my entire life. While we waited for the thunderstorm around us to stop, I watched lightning bounce by my house and thought about how much safer I was in his car than in the shower. When he walked me inside of my house and asked my mother how her day had been, I considered the act of unlearning--forgiving myself for ever accepting otherwise. As he spoke with my brother, I thought about how much we all look alike. And when he shook my father’s hand before walking out, he did so firmly. When I woke up the next morning, I made my coffee in a mug that was too small. I walked with it to my room and looked anywhere but down. Then my room smelled like coffee. 

Miami in the summer is as hot, as boring, and as perfect as ever.

Bits and pieces of recent thoughts and occurences. A lot of the same. Which is really wonderful. Family dinners, too. I am the luckiest girl in the world !!!!!