Taste of Home

I miss the chorus of chirping cicadas, the bedtime melody called on by the moon when the air turns gray. Here, they use white noise machines – the ones that fit neatly in drawers, curl up during the day, the way I imagine cicadas do, hibernating and waiting for our nighttime buzz and glow. Michigan is lake waves lapping softly against rock barriers, the seasonal gardens someone’s mother pours their heart into just to die in the survivalist kind of winter. Here, seasons are brutal and beautiful. Calling Houston home, time pours out like squeezing the last drops of ketchup out of a bottle. All at once, then none at all.

Before I came here, sitting in my own room had begun to feel separated from home. I remember the way the door squeaked as I dragged my dirt-soaked feet across the wood and shut the door, the sky dark after a long day of school and practice. I’d drive home barefoot, marveling at the way my foot, wiggling under a white sock turned muddy, could turn an engine, drive thirty miles to the soundtrack of John Mayer and Juice WLRD reminding me what emptiness feels like. A luxury to hear about emptiness, instead of feeling it. The way the road’s heart beat with mine: alone, but never lonely.

Here, the air is salty sweat, hot breaths from the lakes that devour our consciousness with their beauty. Early in the morning, I pound over gravel roads, run towards a barn recently painted white to conceal its decades of sacrifices. To the winters where summer frolickers flee and seasonal villages lay vacant, when love for nature turns into nights curled around the bonfire, craving protection. Northern Michigan, a tangle of trees and memories of a time where people were content to just be. I open a Snapchat from my friends, together, painting clown makeup across their faces, looking out over the Houston skyline as the sun sets. It’s a different kind of living, the life that happens through bursts of light through a screen, the one I look up from just for bursts of air, to marvel at how his smile rests peacefully on his lips.

I came here for him after all: the guy beneath the mess of hair that stands up straight when he gets out of the water. I wonder if he keeps me around just as the raging conservative inside him likes: slow to change, liking consistency. Me, the stallion of adventures and plane flights, ready to ride waves into places I’ve never seen, to have those conversations that linger on the tips of our lips, muzzled by the fear of saying the wrong thing. Lingering with it in the silence no one tells you about – the silence of companionship.

Living in a place like this has birthed his stubbornness, I decide. Why settle for less when the air can breathe new life into you with each exhale, where the jet ski’s gentle motor cuts through the water’s sheen like slicing fresh brownies from their boiling aluminum foil. I rub my fingers over the unfinished wood that doesn’t see the sun nine months out of the year. The objects that birth a second life as their owners slave behind Macs and dial-ins, dreaming of letting the sun’s fingers run over their freckled faces when summer emerges triumphant. There’s protection in the openness – nothing unexpected in water that reveals through to the lake’s bottom. Years lay out clear like swimsuits hung to dry, shedding only drops.

I want him to tell me the story of his parents who can hardly make it through a TV episode at 11 pm, enraptured in drunken love all those years ago. Not drunken, never drunk. People of God don’t rely on alcohol to free them. For his eyes to sparkle as I see how they used to lay in each other’s arms to Notorious B.I.G.’s verse like gospel, flying around on the backs of motorcycles like life were a Polaroid they could throw into the wind and develop with flash-light, sneaking through the woods at night. Part of me wants that to be us, even in this reality that’s all but simple. But this is no 80’s chick flick.

Him and I sit in a diner, silent except for my fingers, manicure chipping, playing across the plastic tabletop to some indistinct melody. It’s my last day here, and the air is heavy knowing it’ll be weeks before we see each other again. How are there never words at the moments that need them most? I think of those cicadas, the ones I’ll be tuning out with mild annoyance tonight at home, comfortable but feeling incomplete. I try to remember who said it – our emotions are never fully developed in the present, only in our memories – we move too fast for our awareness to keep up. I look into his eyes and wonder if we could be those people, the ones who throw around kisses after thirty years and see each other with new eyes every morning.

I wonder if the world drawing lines, liberal, conservative, heretic will start to separate us. Here, the water is rising, they tell us. The beaches, submerged in that crystal water we ran through to get to the bluff, looked out over the lakes that seemed to go on and on. Me, knowing that love flows endlessly like that – with the right person. No, I’m not quite sure what I feel at this moment, the silence between us heavy like summer days back in Houston. Only, I wouldn’t replace it, and I wouldn’t be here except for the world turning on its side, me submitting to it. That’s all we can really do, after all. I imagine myself fitting together perfectly with him, crusty morning eyes to my perky ones, flushed, rosy cheeks to my pale moon dimples. A simple moment can separate us, strangers except for memory. For just a second, I forget this isn’t home. Time filters through light, light filters through my lips, parted just enough to taste the moment. Salty. Exhale, and it’s just us again, wondering how to fill the silence that flows on and on.