Moody Weather

Santa Cruz, California

At the intersection of Edgewood Place and La Brea I let my eyes drift closed even as Oliver's voice ran on, its cadence the cusp of boy and man. I could see the light still red the parking lights of the car ahead of me firm. I was in the left turn lane and if I'd gone straight when the light turned green I might have entered a certain street in Newport Rhode Island where I lived during the summer after my sophomore year in college. Through my half-closed eyes I saw the intersection and the used bookstore at the end of it where I bought a dog-eared copy of Crime and Punishment from a bearded man who told me your eyes are moon pools. That was the summer I rode like crazy in a borrowed car to Hartford and up an elevator to a room and a shower and a door that I opened to a boy I loved who told me later it was your hair, wet and that one phrase lasted or made it last, it seemed, for years. But I'm in an intersection in Los Angeles, my eyes closed my son's sing song, my eyes open and then closed then open and now it's green and even as I turn left and away it's almost like water is there instead of road, the moon pools into tides and I'm a mermaid, tail curved beneath another's dark arm.