the last Love Story For Sunday...
for a while, anyway. This period of my life needs to go back in the box for a while, for my own good.


The Death of California

California ended on March 1st, 1973, on the beach at the end of Avenue G. Everything you owned was packed in your car, the apartment over the luncheonette emptied out, hollow and melting like a jack o'lantern on a late November front porch. No ghosts could live there, it was a place too sad for haunting, we carried our ghosts out with us, quietly as always. We met up on the chilly beach just after noon, when the fog had been blown over to try out Japan by the landward breeze. I couldn't talk. You wouldn't. Not that we ever did that much, our conversations were mostly visual. You stuck your hand out from under the red and white striped blanket you wore wrapped around you and took mine, only for a moment and then let it drop. You turned your face into the side of my arm and cried. I could only look down at your always bare feet, so tan and so tiny and watch the sand crush up between your curled toes. It half covered your pink nail polish and made your toes look like lost bits of coral. You turned away from me and walked away and, although I should have, I didn't watch you go.
And so it ended a block from where it began, with a late night cup of coffee and a meeting by chance.
It was real quiet when California died. I was never party to the death of a place before. It wasn't nice.

wander with me...