I made it to New York! I've wanted to be here for so long and it is amazing, but I miss miss miss my best friend who left me this morning and is now on a plane back to Tucson. I love him. I miss him. I am not alone, though. My second-best friend- my little tabby cat- is stretched across my lap and yawning. She has come so far! She was born feral beneath creosote in arizona but now she is an apartment-dwelling new yorker with a pink bow on her collar.

I'm in Tucson again but in a week I'll be gone for good, I'll be out of this town, this surreal place that smells so strongly of creosote tonight as wind and rain rack the fences and lightning and lightning and lightning flashes all over the black and blue and rose sky. I'm in love with the Sonoran desert and its dusty-sweet scent and its atomic sunsets. I'm in love with my flock of doves and thrashers and cactus wrens. I'm in love. I'm heartbroken. In a week I'll be in New York while the only friends I've ever loved enough to die with or die for are half a world away.