Hazy

I feel like I looked away and two years flew by.  Wasn't I just in Barcelona with my friend, Alicia?

I lived in a cute house next to a forest known for mountain lions and homeless people.  The house had a dog door and a dishwasher.  The forest had pine needles and sky.  I went for walks with Lori and drinks with Sandra.  I lifted heavy weights and carried the world, they said.

Was it a dream that I slipped away?

Did I step through some sort of portal?

I look forward and I am working in a small office in a large building in a mid-sized Hoosier city known for not much outside of the local university having a great football team.  It is humid here and the houses are tiny and quite old, which adds character, they say.

My friend, Hope, died.  That memory is oddly sharp in the midst of this haze.  I do not forget that.

I remember every moment of that phone call -how my head was tilted against the headboard, how the phone felt smooth and hot, how the sheets wrapped around my toes felt rough and cold, how Adrianne's voice seemed tinny and far away and so so tired, how the midnight snow made the world all blue and strange.  How I should have been there when it happened.  I do not forget that.

When the sun shines here, the whole world is impossibly green.  When the moon glows here, tiny lights skirt above the grass and blink away.  Lightning bugs, they say.

Fairy lights dancing in the haze.