(4) Memory (Week One)

A year ago, around this time of May. Freshly graduated with a wedding dress stuffed in the closet. It's not to blame, I know. In early April, my aunt booked me first-class for the west. Arizona. The thought of desert and heat no less appealing than clichés of a broken engagement in spring. Full bloom. For the first time, at twenty-two, my last name felt heavy on my tongue and somehow real. My mother calls it something like shame, mistakes me for an earlier, but, then again, she can barely cling to the man shouldered next her. On the plane, catered at my seat, I considered the cool ink on letters from the first two years.  A scriptured signature. Now lost to the garbage man and his treasure trove of yesterdays. I liked the Bloody Mary’s best, three olives and rimmed salt. In Mesa a dust bowl swirled my hair with welcome, the smell of red Sedona and my uncle’s sarcastic love.  We dined on desire just across the Town Dump. Sushi and cocktails. After, our chef asked to show me the Camel’s Back just before the peach-faces burrow away with night. So I waited for him below an eight-armed Cholla, charmed by the busyness in its stance—bold with itself. And I wanted that.