I’m in Portland. My body is hairless. I’ve had five mimosas and counting. The sky is smaller than Illinois’. There’s something interrupting the horizon — a mountain, or two, like the ghosts of some star-crossed clouds, and my skin is itching for some half-thought tattoo.

I can smell the flowers in bloom. I can hear the love of two strangers meeting for the first time, liveliness in the breath of quiet between passerby cars. It’s all what I’d missed the last time I was here — the water and wind and kisses of drunk lovers, streetside.