Dear P,
I’m sorry you’re stuck finishing finals. I have landed solidly in our hometown for the summer; you’re not missing much. It rained today for the first time since January. The smell was amazing. My granddad put a rain gauge in his front yard to measure the addition to the 9/10ths of an inch of rain we have gotten so far this year.
Before it started raining I went to yoga class with B at the new yoga studio on 34th Street. My brothers use my yoga mat to put under their sleeping bags during Boy Scout campouts, so it smells like campfire. The smell was distracting as I tried to focus my breath as I lay prone on the mat. My fourth grade reading teacher was doing the same thing next to me. Things are kind of awkward between us. I talked to her the first lesson I saw her. Since, we haven’t really chatted; we just smile and nod. What do you say? “Look, I have come far from the weird kid I once was, but I still can’t really do the third warrior pose?”
My chickens are doing well. I expected them to be picked off immediately by the foxes that live in our neighborhood after my dog died last month, but they are still hanging in there. They are so dumb it takes them a long time to realize when they are being fed. When they do realize, they attack their corn like little Velociraptors. It’s not hard to imagine how birds evolved from dinosaurs around them, but it still blows my mind. My mom made a new coop for them. You can just pull out a little drawer to get their mini-dinosaur eggs. They’re so dumb, they can’t count how many eggs they have, so as long as you leave a fake one they won’t get upset and start hiding their eggs somewhere else.
Last night I went to see Godzilla with B, H, J, and H’s boyfriend. We went to Sheridan’s afterwards. We watched a black pickup truck drive over a curve across a grass median into the Rosas parking lot. There were a lot of strange, green, square-ish bugs that kept getting in our hair and teenagers that dropped their frozen custard on the ground because apparently they’re dumber than my chickens. I knew the girl that made our ice cream. J and I tried to remember her last name as we approached her in line. Our hometown is just so small. It’s hot, dry, and claustrophobic in a nice way. Like a sauna with all your friends from middle school and their grandparents in it.
Come home soon, yeah?
E
