Basic Space.

In Seattle, the air smelled like salt and clams and basil and crisp autumn leaves. The loveliest smells, the warmest smells on the coldest of mornings. We drove past callow gardens with red and blue birdhouses. Walked beneath crossroads with spiderweb cables, guiding swerving metro buses. Stepped over manholes where steam seeped from the underground city. Fish scales lined the walls above galleries and pale strings hung limply from tree limbs. We drove from the forest hideaways, away from the most darling of twins. I wondered if business ever brought you to Seattle and I wept when I thought of the souvenir gifts that I couldn't hand to you and the letters I had been writing but never slipped into the mailbox. I made Peter feel the hollow spots in my hands, the places where tiny birds could make a nest for little robin eggs. Between the bones. Middle finger-forefinger nests. I snapped photos of the lumber factories, the steel factories, and the cement factories. Man-made pleasantries in the middle of somewhere. I drank chamomile lavender tea and coconut black tea and raspberry Italian soda in the loveliest cafes. We drenched ourselves in hotel hot tubs in our underthings because we had forgotten swimsuits. I whispered goodbye to the sea when we stepped off four wooden posts.

On the way home, we drove from the outskirts of Portland alongside the yellow lights of steam boats and white sails. The basic spaces of my skin and three sleeping bodies, my skin and the road. I came over the top of a midnight hill, the top of the world perhaps, and I saw a thousand blinking red lights. I've missed you, I thought. Hello, hello, hello they blinked to me.  I stared at my face in the rear-view mirror for a moment, I looked so pale, so washed out. You ghostly thing, I thought. We hid away on the interstate and I thanked Peter and Chelsey and Sean for the loveliest three days away from home.