It was dawn and we crossed the bridge with the dim light kissing the goosebumps on our arms. It was still only spring, but you made things glow like summertime and I couldn’t help but shed the extra layers.

It was too early for morning traffic, the police cars had finished their rounds, there were no giddy school girls giggling at bus stops, only the sun crawling over the horizon and us. My hand clung lightly to your elbow as you cradled the brown paper bag of last night’s bottles in your arms, balancing them and my body delicately on either side of you. Whenever I came to the city to visit you, you never let sleep get in the way of our precious numbered hours. Numbered, because I was a wanderer, one you couldn’t figure out how to tie down.

The morning wind blew abruptly across my skin yet I felt a certain heat trickle through me invitingly. I wasn’t sure if it was your presence so close at my side or the remnants of warming alcohol running its final course through my system.

When we cleared the empty bridge we approached a small, lovely park on the other side. Sacred and deserted, we came upon it with hushed whispers and laughter. You guided me towards a picnic table and I thought we were finally taking a break from our adventures. On the contrary, the table was simply a suitable place to drop our bottles, but I sat on the cool, damp bench anyway and ran my fingers over all the names and symbol’s engraved into the ancient surface. These precious memories were forever held as a testament to their existence by a piece of rotting wood. They were held in one place forever, never allowed to stray away and be lost in the vastness of the world.

You placed your hand over mine, as if you were trying to feel the unique way I touched the world beneath my fingertips. You guided our fingers over the wood.

You said, “Our names are meant to be whispered, we’re too subtle for wood carvings,” and then lacking all subtleness, you lifted me from my seat by my wrists and pulled me towards the basketball court.

“I believe I’ve chosen the perfect place to ‘court’ my lady,” you said with a trademark smirk. I couldn’t help but giggle as you bowed slightly and extended your hand towards me. With the typical stubbornness that’s always intrigued you, I crossed my arms against my chest, stuck my nose in the air and closed my eyes. But as I peeked at you from under my lashes only to see you smiling up at me, hand still extended, I broke into a smile of my own realizing that I was the silly one for thinking I even had a choice.

As soon as I put my hand in yours, you pulled me against your body and we danced right in the middle of the basketball court. I clumsily tripped on your ankles and you laughed and held me closer to keep me from stumbling.

“All the places you’ve travelled to and you still haven’t picked up any dance moves,” you murmured softly in my ear.


“Well how am I supposed to keep rhythm without any music?”

“But there’s music all around, just listen,” you said matter-of-factly.


There was no sound but the faint movement of the river tucked far beneath the bridge and two thumping hearts dribbling on the basketball court. Everything was still, yet not.


“Oh yes, I hear it now... It’s beautiful.”


My head was resting on your shoulder and you were stroking my hair. You must have liked that.

“It’s only beautiful because you hear it.”

Catching you in the moment, I grabbed your shoulders and pulled you down onto the concrete. We rolled from the concrete to the lush green grass that beckoned to us from the sidelines, wet with morning dew. Wrestling playfully in the grass I pinned you roughly under me, to which you had no objection, and brushed my lips against yours. A wildfire spread across my lips like the crooked smirk that had spread across yours.

You said, almost smug, victorious, “I thought we weren’t going to do this anymore?”

“Wasn’t there a lot of this kind of thing going on between us last night?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, but I know how alcohol makes your inhibitions slip away. The night is always a fun time, but it seems to leave things cloudy and surreal... but right now you’re sober and you’re real and you’re on top of me in the grass, kissing me as the sun comes up.”

“Don’t get used to it,” I said. I bit your lip playfully, trying to mask the utter truth in my words, jumping to my feet and cutting across the park towards the children’s swings. Before I reached the sand I flung my shoes off and tiptoed to the swing set, dancing across a meadow of fairy dust.

With the wind in my face, playing with my hair as I swung slowly, I realized that I had spend the first fifteen minutes of daylight smelling something magic in the air. Only you had this effect on me. I had tried to talk us both out of this a thousand times over and you always listened politely, waiting for my bout of stubbornness to pass. But here I was, back in this town and in love with you all over again, and the worst and most glorious part was that you knew it. Here I was realizing that no distance between us could ever really make me fall out of love, realizing that I thought of you in my mind as some heart wrenching, unattainable goodbye. And you always waited for me to come back to you, like a misguided bird you’d have to set free all over again.

You followed me to the swing set but I yelled at the top of my lungs before you even set foot in the sand.

“Not with your shoes! They need to come off, that means socks too!” I warned, swinging higher now, voice dancing somewhere in suspended air.

You shook your head smiling, untying your shoelaces and complying with my demands. Finally, barefoot, you stepped onto the golden fairy dust and wiggled your toes. I found this charming. You leaned against the thick iron pole of the swings and I slowed my pace and we talked. We talked about last night, about the last three years, about growing up in the city, living out of a suitcase, about the future that I always made so mysterious for myself.

“How long are you with me this time?” You said.
 The tone made me uncertain.


“...I don’t know.”

“Very promising. When do you take off to France for the University of Versailles?”


“I start at Université de Versailles at the end of August.”


“Touché. So you’re staying with me for the summer, then.”

“Well, I don’t know about that, I don’t think I should...”

He smiled with finality, his most dazzling I-can-see-through-your-bullshit-by-now smile. He knew I was hooked. On the inside, my heart fluttered at the thought of staying with him at his apartment for the summer, having some sort of anchor before moving to Europe for God knows how long, to pursue whatever happens to come my way. But right now, I felt as if I knew exactly what I wanted to pursue, and it was flesh and bones.

“It’s okay, we don’t have to discuss this right now. Let’s just enjoy our weekend of suburban adventure and see how things play out,” you said, sounding pleased with yourself. You were such a devil. You knew things would always play out in your favor and that my stubbornness would soon damper.

You watched in silence as my swing came slowly to a halt, my toes brushing the rough surface where so many feet had scraped to a stop, leaving the earth raw. You scooped up a handful of sand and blew it in my direction, like real fairy dust, and I laughed as tiny grains tickled my bare legs.

“There’s love in the air,” you said, as you got up and sat on the swing adjacent to mine.

“I think that might be the river,” I replied, sniffing the wind.

You breathed in again and said, “No, that’s the smell of home.”

“Home?” I said.

“Yeah, you know, home? If you were born again in another life, I swear you’d be a turtle carrying around your life on your back. But home is everywhere. Home is the world. This is where you belong.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but shut it again promptly. You took my hands in yours.


“I belong wherever you do.”

“Nowhere?”

You laughed. “No... everywhere.”

We sat in silence again, hand and hand, watching the birds peck away at the laces of your sneakers that lay discarded in the grass.

We finally rose from those immortal swings and you let go of my hand only to chase the birds away from your torn sneakers. The sun was almost fully risen when we decided to walk downtown to wait for the coffee shops to open so we could have some breakfast and you could try to empty whatever you had in your wallet on me, knowing I’d simply blush and refuse.

As we walked the highway only beginning to trickle to life with early morning traffic, we hummed to each other to drown out the sound of cars. When I started to whistle you scolded me and said I wasn’t doing it right. You stopped on the side of the highway and told me to lick my lips and form them into an “O”, you grabbed my cheeks and kissed me just as I tried to suck in air. I sucked your kiss instead, caught off guard by the butterflies tickling the back of my throat, threatening to flutter right through my parted lips.

You laughed and said “It’s fine, we’ll leave the whistling to birds. Wouldn’t want to make them jealous.” I felt the blood heat up in my veins and you continued to chatter lightly as we walked.

We approached the old side of downtown and sat at a small wooden table on the makeshift terrace of our favorite cafe. You pulled out a deck of cards warm from your back pocket and instead of playing a game we made houses and castles, your delicate fingers stacking layer upon layer into a sturdy structure. As hard as I tried, I could not even make it past ground level. As I tried a third time and the cards came fluttering down with the slightest of touches, I grumbled impatiently under my breath.

“So, is this home?” I mumbled, basking easily in my defeat.

“No, that’s just the wind.”


It took four customers to walk by and set off the jingle above the doorway until we realized that it was 7:30 am, half an hour after opening. There we were, two adults with worries and problems and responsibilities, too absorbed with our playing card houses to take notice of anything. You made me wish we were the Queens and Kings flattened against the thin walls of one of our makeshift palaces, always hidden within ourselves until a gust of wind blew us down, only to be rebuilt again.


As we walked in you said, “The usual?” and told me to go take a seat, eyeing the the garage sale velvet couch in the corner by a window, the one you knew I’d automatically be drawn to. You pulled out your hand-me-down sheep skin wallet, which also came from your back pocket, and I snatched it from your hands trying to stuff it back to where it came from.

“If you wanted something other than breakfast, you could have just asked,” you said, raising your eyebrows innocently. I loved and hated that expression, which made it entirely more amazing. The man behind the counter, the owner, chuckled as I blushed and resigned to the renegade Victorian couch beckoning to me from the corner. I put as much value in my independence as I did anything, but you softly disarmed me like slowly slipping off a silk nightgown and revealing a nude body underneath. Like revealing God.


 “I must say, you turned the most marvelous shade of pink back there. I love that I can do that to you,” you said, setting down our cups and plates and touching my cheek with the back of your free hand. You remembered my “usual” to the last detail - English breakfast tea with one milk, two sugars, a croissant with marmalade and a bowl of fruit and yogurt. You took your coffee black, with eggs, sausage and toast, always stacking them into a sort of messy sandwich.


 “It’s not just that I’m paying,” you continued, “it’s me putting the money down on the counter so that everyone can watch as I bring your cup to you and know you’re somehow linked to me, that maybe you’re wearing my clothes to bed at night.”

“How poetic you’ve made spending money sound,” I said sarcastically.


At that very moment I wanted to drown in a sea of your warm, musky bed covers and never resurface. I wanted to forget every reservation, my past, my future, my unfulfilled wandering, my fears and just succumb to your beautiful imagination. I wanted to see myself through your eyes and maybe then I’d be able to stay in your bed forever, caught within of dreamcatcher of unrealistic beauty.


I kissed your cheek and said, “I’m starting to feel possessive.” I wondered how you’d take that, so straightforward and out of character. Maybe I wanted to shake you up. You responded by squeezing my hand and pilling more egg onto your toast.


I, as usual, ate impossibly slow and even when you made a conscience effort you simply could not keep my pace. When we finally rose to leave, I left five dollars and fifty cents on the counter for my tea and breakfast when your back was turned, even though you had already paid for us both. The young man behind the expresso machine looked at me with confusion, but then turned to the owner standing at the cash. He asked me with his eyes, and when I smiled I could tell he saw where I was coming from. Breakfast was such an intimate thing. He looked at the man behind the expresso machine with a slight nod and didn’t say anything, a knowing silence. You went ahead of me, letting the door shut halfway on me before I caught it. You knew I hated people who held doors open for ladies. I was happy you could get used to my way of daily living. It made me think that perhaps I could learn to do the same.


As we walked back in the direction of the bridge, I realized there was a swagger in your step. It was one of the first times that I truly realized how excited about everyday living we were in each other’s presence. It’s hard to find anyone excited about life anymore, but there we were, arms linked and talking about the smell of cut grass during spring time.

“That was my first job, cutting grass,” you said.


We crossed the street and stood for a second watching a girl and her tiny dog as it pranced around excitedly, getting her tangled in its patent leather leash. Before we had stopped to watch, I had been thinking what it would be like to travel with you, someone who was not ignorant or unworldly but who simply liked to remain rooted to his own familiarity. What was so familiar about me that kept you so infatuated?


I imagined you just as the dog we were watching. I imagined you coming with me to France, you sniffing around at the new scents and me waiting while you excitedly found your way around the new sidewalk. I imagined talking to you in a calm voice when I was angry and you curling up next to me in bed, keeping my feet warm, panting at just the sight of me. I smiled at the humor of it but then bit my lip. My colorful imagination aside, I felt as if I knew all of your insides at that exact moment. If life were a series of still-frames, you complimented every shot you were in, but I was still afraid. Afraid of how the sun so easily bronzed your skin, how you got drunk off the spring air, how you viewed the world and how it viewed you, like the shiny curve of an oyster shell so easily smashed open out of a lesser creature’s greed. I realized that I wanted to wear your pearl around my neck forever.

Back at your apartment, after walking for fifteen more minutes, you opened the door silently. As soon as I stepped through the doorway, you closed it swiftly behind us and got down on your knees. You picked up my hand and said, “No where else in the world is as colorful as this foyer right now.”

I looked from your eggshell white walls, the the dusty blinds, to the brown shag carpet beyond the entrance, down to your black t-shirt and said, “Foyer?”
 You said, “You’re the eloquent one, Madame Université de Versailles.”

I laughed at my own pompousness and kissed your hair. I held your head against my stomach and you listened to me breathing.

In the front room there were raincoats, trenches, and windbreakers hung up in the open closet over a pile of boots and sneakers in the corner. I wanted to add my shoes to the pile. 


Without moving your head pressing against my stomach, I kicked off my shoes and there was nowhere else in the world as colorful as right then. The Louvre could not hold more color or beauty. 


You would not let go of me. Not when the phone rang, not when your roommate came down the stairs groggily for breakfast and thought you were dying, not when I asked if you still had feeling in your knees, to which you replied, “What knees?”


I bent over and nibbled on your ear, kissed your forehead and ran my nails along your neck. I knew I wanted you badly then and tried to take you upstairs, but you kept pulling me back to that place on the welcome mat, like you were showing me that it’s okay to stay rooted to one place for a while. It’s okay to let a wonderful moment drag on a little longer that it’s supposed to. The sun seemed to be filtering in through the tiny window above the door and I exhaled and said “alright”, affirming everything and nothing in particular.

I surrendered a little bit of myself to the morning, and a bit more to you, your head still bobbing with the rhythm of my breathing, more still to your brilliant smile, and to God. Because, standing with you in the most colorful foyer in the world, I knew there was love in the air. And when I inhaled my next breath, I knew that the air smelt like home.

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