Moat

Yeah, there's no good pics of it on the internet, so we'll have to wait until I can hit the pink light well and get some.

Here's what you do.

You go to work in the wasteland of asphalt south of Market. You come pretty close to firing two guys. One lucked out because you're more angry with the other one, and the second one lucked out because he didn't show his face today. You step out and it is once again HOT, dammit, and you remember that it's supposed to be hot this time of year in this place. You go to Panera for dinner and think of the leaves starting to change in Missouri, which you won't get to see. You write through the mild homesickness for your allotted three pages and you go for a walk to find the library down there.

While stumbling around for the library, you walk through a granite park full of dogs and setting sun and pink light. You look across what they call Mission Creek, and there, across the water, are WILLOWS.

Willows.

God would remember this place more if every boring and flashy palm were replaced with a willow. You cross the drawbridge in step with the T Line. You walk under a willow. You breathe. Everyone will keep their jobs today and tomorrow. You watch the sun melt on the water. You watch your bitterness melt on the water. You know EXACTLY what this reminds you of, even though this will never remind another soul of the same thing.

You know this brings up Shoreline. It brings up the girl you moved here and lost, the skunks you saw by the pond there, the Indian and Latino families offering up their calls to their children and husbands as though releasing dinner aroma. You sat on a bench there too. You gave up a car and gave up Shoreline.

You flew kites there with your brother until the line burned through the soft side of your knuckles.

"And that R.E.M. song was playing in my mind...3 and a half minutes felt like a lifetime."

A reason to be grateful for the heat, you vow to come back and write with your feet in the grass. There's Phil's Coffee down the street. And you found the library, open late on Wednesdays, and no one between me and the N with a claw hammer in his hand.

Yet. 'Til then, a new friend in place.

Selah, dear reader, and sleep well.