Author Information
Portland THE Oregon
PORTLAND OREGON
My streets were paved in yellow dreams and setting suns over bodies of water
and blues music followed by the smell of cigarette smoke that I find comforts me now as I’ve moved away.
My angels were bridges that enveloped the sky and my heaven was the blurred lights off of tall buildings that were the stars in my city.
My canvas was the Gorge and my painting was the sweat of summer adventure committed by a coniferous childhood.
My happiness was shutting my eyes and taking in everything I couldn’t see. Smells of campfires, songs on guitars, gasoline burning behind our rocket to the memories I cherish most.
My freedom was escaping into the night to sit on the shoulder of green giant and have conversations with her but never needing any words.
My relief was to exclaim all my furiosity to the water, and take it out on the rocks by the dock. To mock back at the seagulls who first mocked me with their judging eyes.
My guidance was light posts that flickered and signaled my return to home.
and still today I reserve a section of my heart and mind to Sauvies island, with its bushes painted red in the summer and its ground splattered with orange in the fall and its pine scented traditions growing in the winter.
And my childhood romance was with a City whose outer beauty was comprised of skyscrapers and waterfronts and inner beauty was the acceptance of the people who resided there.
And I bought her love in return, not with money, but with hours of my life spent roaming the trails, and the tracks, and with all the times I got lost in a City that I know like the back of my hand, and with all the times I loved underneath those rain clouds, and smiled at a bus stop, or let my arms get slapped with wind on a long car drive while blaring billy joel in the back seat of my mother’s minivan.
I earned her love.
and the problem with moving away is that you leave different parts of your heart in different cities, which never allows you to fully feel at home ever again.
Yet the price is worth paying a million times over.
But what I know today is that I left
my untamed spirit,
my wild abandon,
my insatiable hunger for color,
the smell of rain and lavender,
the jumps to the trees
the mowed grass
the smashed cherries on the ground
the feeling of being small and big all at the same time
the finite and massive details that I captured with my blue eyes
in a city that flies with her own wings
and will forever be my start
P.S Suck it Seattle
