Birthday

It has been humid lately, the kind of warm damp that makes the bedsheets stick to your legs and get all wound up. The late sunsets make me never want to sleep.

I’m full of nervous energy all night and drowsy during the day. My dreams are about traveling, looping back again and again over the same old familiar territories that exist nowhere but there – the dream lake, the dream bridge, the dream island where the airport is, where I’m always missing my flight.

My birthday brought back memories. One night I had dinner with old friends and a woman who asked uncomfortable questions that made me laugh to try and keep from answering. The next I ate fancy tapas with newer old friends and held a study group during my birthday meal. We stopped studying long enough to eat chocolate souffle, though.

My birthday is over but I still have memories buzzing around my head. I try to wave them away, but they come back again and again.