When it gets warm this country is so gorgeous. It makes dreary winters falls and springs worth the wait. I am planting tomatoes and cucumbers, tending to herbs, eating popsicles, making jewelry, painting pots, constructing things out of clay, cooking hummus and pesto and cucumber salads, lazing about on the front porch, watching men across the street painting walls, and doing just about everything but writing my thesis. Camping this weekend.

You were driving, like you always do, facing forward with that confident smirk on your face that insecure people take for arrogance. Your hair is curly and the sun hits it in a certain way so that you are illuminated in stretches, this side of your face in relative shadow, in the cool of my glance. I am half embarrassed about last night and half diffident; you turn me into a child, sometimes, and other times, a woman twice my age. I am moving away from one table and towards another. Everyone I have ever met is reflected on the bright side of your face, turned away from me.