pink skies

We landed on Saturday and left the airport into biting November wind. We ate pizza on the sidewalk and shared cigarettes. We ran a shower and ended up on the couch wearing towels while we waited for it to get hot. I grabbed her hand and pulled her to my lap and we kissed. Warm hands in the cold room gracing skin feeling like hours. Not wanting to get in the shower now because that would mean one thing is ending for the next. Getting in the shower because the next thing can only be better than the last. We laid in bed drunk and fell asleep watching one of her bedtime movies—one of the ones she’s seen so many times it helps her fall asleep. 

***

We rented a car for a drive into the mountains. I wouldn’t shut up about how beautiful Colorado is compared to California while she tried to sleep away another hangover. Everything wider, cleaner, greener, fresher. Holding hands as we drove deeper into the snow making note of backwoods diners and a Bigfoot museum we should stop by on the way down.

She brightened up when we got to the trailhead. Aspens reached high with yellow leaves shimmering like wind chimes. Silent except for the frozen creek trickling by. A blue bird flew over us and landed in a tree. She followed it to take a picture. Each step she took closer, the bird hopped a branch higher as if taunting her. I watched, taking it in, laughing at her and the bird, and nothing was bad and nothing could be perfect but it felt like it was.

I felt it walking through the forest where there were fresh paw prints in the snow that must have been a mountain lion’s. Thinking about how I’d undoubtedly snap a mountain lion’s neck if she needed me to. Feeling foolishly confident I wouldn’t hesitate. No mountain lions though. We made out in the woods like teenagers before building an inordinately busty snowwoman, then we hiked back to the car to go for a drive.

I surprised her with a detour through Red Rocks as the sun went down. The park was closed but we saw the oranges, the purples, the pinks; bursts of godlight staining sunburned stone before it went dark. In another bar in the next town over, we warmed up sitting next to a fire. I told her the next stop would be coffee and dessert. She said, “You have really good ideas.”

Coffee and dessert and laughing, smiling, joking. Wanting her only to associate me with good things. We watched a Christmas movie back at the room and drank Colorado whiskey. We fell asleep with the blinds up while the city tenderly peeked through.

***

Last day. We slept in and ordered room service before checking out. I looked around the room one last time in case it would end up a memory laid among a few thousand scattered or discarded others.

We left the hotel looking for somewhere to get a tattoo. She wasn’t sure what she wanted or where it would go. She decided at the last minute to get a horseshoe on her ankle against her better judgement. A silhouette in a fighting stance now sits on my leg above the words “Don’t Try.” She said it felt like it was meant to be.

She didn’t want to go home when we got to California, so we had dinner by the airport. Then there was coffee and dessert followed by another night spent together. Another day. Another night. Then a few thousand more.