100 Proof

Some mornings, the tentacles of whatever story held me under the surface of sleep keeps its stranglehold on my brain even after I’ve emerged from bed. The dream stays salty in my mouth, changing the taste of toast, eggs, coffee. Even while walking to the bus, it is as if I am treading water, my legs at risk of tangling in seaweed and kelp. It might be noon, those days, before I am once again grounded, before I finally have both feet on this world’s shore.

Look carefully—all city birds are not as generic as they may appear. Sometimes, you can spot one hobbling on a stump, limping as it pecks at crumbs on the sidewalk. Once, I saw one balanced on a lone stem so slight it seemed impossible it managed to keep from toppling.

Perhaps many birds lose a leg, a claw—perhaps both. We never see the ones that can’t adapt to disability—they disappear behind trash bins, in alleys.

But the strong ones learn new skills. The one-legged bird needs to know how to land safely every once in awhile.

As dawn broke on my 30th birthday, I sat on a balcony chair, my belly torn apart by food poisoning, my then-boyfriend asleep in the other room, even though I’d told him how important this ritual was. The waking city below me sounded slow that Sunday summer’s day.

Sometimes twice fifteen feels like one hundred when it stumbles in. But that makes the next decade the one when we heal, become stronger than we knew we could, and finally leave the broken behind and shout out with more sure voices.

* For Dottie, at 30.

Before the ride, one operator took my picture, though I protested I was not a tourist. You’re so beautiful, he said. And you’re getting on the cable car. I should definitely take it.

It is the best of the lines, we agree, though the operators claim people who live in town never appreciate the cable cars as much as the tourists.

I do, I say. I wish I could ride them more often.

And with that, they begin the work of moving the car up the California Street hill, gliding, like magic, on a perpetual river of metal.

At each departure, we hope for directions, guidance beyond the edge that marks one journey’s end, another’s beginning. We wish for clear signs and easy exits.

But no one has yet discovered how to map thin air—there are no paths to follow when one takes a brave, necessary leap. There is only the net that appears, made of many hands, some familiar, some yet-unknown.

The owners of those interwoven hands whisper, We know you will soar. They whisper, We will catch you if you need us. They whisper, We will see you very, very soon.

* To Jen Maiser, for this next beginning.

In the tire store waiting room, the television blared an interview with a woman who eats mostly roadkill she finds near her home.

What? said the other man waiting with me. What? He began to laugh loudly—he was still in that jolly place that lasted the mechanic came to tell him he needed to replace all four tires.

How does a person develop a taste for roadkill? he said. Her brain just turned into a hog brain.