October 1, 2017

I am writing this from Chicago which is a place that exists warmly, but nonspecifically, in my memory as a city that feels like home. Or a city in which I have felt the elusive feeling of home inside of. Or a city that people who feel like home to me call home. It’s not because of my grasp on the geography (of which I have none) or mastery of the public transit system (of which I also have none). I don't have any idea on which direction I’m facing. I dressed for 66 and sunny but maybe degrees work differently here? All of the street signs feel like places I’ve been, forgotten, and then been to again. A memory so clearly described to you that you start to believe it’s actually your own.

The postcard I sent showed up on the same day that I did and you pulled it out of your letterbox while I stood in the vestibule with my suitcase. I remember so clearly what it felt like to always be counting two hours, three hours ahead and imagining what the light looked like here or there or wherever at that time of day. I have no concept of where your first apartment was but I remember the green of the copper. The living room too warm. Was it that trip or the next that Steph stick n poked me in that wingback chair? I remember feeling altogether alone and not alone, which is a sensation I feel strongly about banishing.

I recently purchased a new camera and am trying to get back into the habit again, of course, which was a habit I was also trying to get into five entire years ago when I lost nearly all of the tourism pamphlets you and your sister had sent in a pre-trip care package when a great wind swept them out of my hands and into Lake Michigan. My hands were red in the February wind which seems like maybe foreshadowing for the arthritis currently making a home in my joints, but I know better than to spend too much time weaving a serial killer-style map of theories. I already have too many of those.

You’re asleep in the other room and I was going to blame my lack of sleep on time zones and desynchronosis but I’ve since passed the point of reasonable condemnation. I’m awake because I couldn’t stop thinking about how you said you’ve been much better and how I believe it. And how many times that’s felt impossibly out of grasp. And how we couldn’t even spend more than forty fucking free dollars on tapas but it felt like we’d spent a thousand bucks.

I wanted to tell you that I never did forgive myself for giving you those bad directions, and all those jokes about the quiet year, but I’m still learning about what feelings you can and cannot banish. I guess that’s one more to add to the list.

I’m awake because one of my absolute worst fears is a failing memory, which is why I’m always writing things down, and in a strange turn of events (see aforementioned map of theories in the cartographical styling of a serial killer) the fear has started coming true. But I have the ticket stubs and bad poems to prove I was here. I can engineer it backwards from those coordinates if I have to.