i can smell the strawberries from here

today i have a meeting with the grants and loans guys at chiles tourism, parks and recreation department to show them my photographs. i was nervous and sweating and sticking to the sleek white stools trying to keep my legs closed while peeling them up off in painful rips every couple minutes, that slow stick that makes noise and reminds you that while leather looks nice, its not always practical. its hard not to bite my nails and mess with my hair, which is still wet from swimming in the pool earlier at leos house, theres nothing better than swimming at 10am, he had said, grinning. im distracted today, everyone wants to know what happens next and im not sure what to say, "i dont know" doesnt seem appropriate. everyone wants me to know, like how could i not? if anything, these past two months have presented more options, things i never knew were available to me, things i never knew i wanted and so i cant chose, i hardly know which way is south, which way is north (that night j had turned me in the kitchen and said, no, this way is california and i just stared at him, tequila big blue blurry eyes, no way, no way i kept saying and he put his hands on top of mine and stretched my arms up out to my sides, north, south, slowly turning me around, eyes closed, see, see how different that feels, north, south). i can hardly distinguish what has been a dream and what has been reality, the lines so terribly inconsistent.
its too cold in the office and everyones staring at me, im underdressed, of course, my tattoos showing, bra straps hanging out and dress too short, mouth too big. im trying come up with a better excuse for why i dont have any photos to show them than they were stolen. robbed. that the house we stayed in, our little haven, first working toilets and a baby with chubby arms that used to fall asleep on my chest in the early evenings, and music, and thick mattresses, that little safe place where i first felt pangs of trust in another person, where i felt i had no choice, that these people were all i had, that i had finally been put in the right place, that maybe, eventually my heart would heal. how could i tell them that house had been robbed, broken into and trashed one night we went out for karaoke, stumbling in laughing, my arm around s's waist, pulling his shirt tight balled up in my sweaty fists, cheeks red, my feet aching but happy and how f had started to cry, all the baby clothes were gone too, and the mattresses we slept on sliced down the middle, big jagged knife cuts like you see in the movies through all the blankets we shared, cutting us right in half, thats how it felt anyway.
thats what this meeting is about you know, my photography, my plan, my story and now what do i have to show for myself? because i wish i had something more than the rocks im carrying around, the scratches on my palms, the short attention span, the desire to keep moving, the ache under the arches of my feet, the way my knees give out sometimes when i stand up, the dizzying memories, the hazy dream of it all. i wish i had more to show you, i want to tell them, believe me, everythings gone, all those photos, even the the rolls i developed in someones makeshift darkroom on chiloe, all those beautiful black and whites, all saved for the one, but its gone too, because i left it with him, the day i left, boat riding literally into the sunset and him waving frantically, if not desperately for me as i left the shore. i didnt cry, it wasnt a painful goodbye, but one i knew would come eventually and so i braced myself for it, talked about it incesantly, when i leave, when i leave. but i could tell it was difficult for him, and so it made it hard to be the one leaving, the one ending things, even though there was nothing beginning enough to end, not on my part anyway, i always told him that when he lingered too long over a sentence, when he took too many photos of me, when he asked me to dance and the song was always slow. its hard to ever feel truly sad about leaving someone when you still feel like youre the one who's been left. it gets easier really, to distance yourself, to live in the moment, to look at greetings like goodbyes. i had taken that particular role of film the night of the full moon festival. i had no idea whether the film would come out or not, if i had the right settings, angle, shot, photography was always more of your thing than mine, i was just playing around, it was too beautiful not to try. the photos came out distorted with light and water spots, blinked with sand. you could make out shapes of faces and outlines of trees or a bright smile in the background, a fire, the ocean, but they were a mess to a person who didnt take them. i thought them fantastically haunting and strange, full of heat and motion. the one i gave him, the only one i could bare to part with i took while we were running and all you can see if the outline of his head and his arm leading back to my outstretched one, so that we made one long pale line, connected and then foot fulls of sand swirled up as we flew to the ocean, to the ocean and the whole picture is an explosion really, except for that one long line that someone would probably never guess was a photographer and her subject, holding hands.
i gave it to him because i didnt want it, i never wanted to see it or him again. its not rude its just the truth, i told you i was being honest.
i never thought all the pictures would be gone though, i looked at them every night and tucked them safely away, i couldnt wait to show everyone, show you what i had done, what i had made. ive thought about trying to contact him, please send me that print, i would say, but he would think it means something and i dont even know his last name anyway. you dont go calling back for things you dont want, you know, you leave them if you want to leave them, you let them settle and rest and recover, alone.
the rocks ive been carrying around in my pocket i havent washed, the dirt comes off onto my palms and makes my hands red, pools at the bottom of my purse and scratches the surface of phones and compacts. im still waiting, theyre 30 minutes behind and im getting more and more fidgety, trying to form in my head a good excuse, ive got another meeting, a lunch thing, something came up can we reschedule? when my hand moves over folded up pieces of paper in a pocket of a purse i forgot i had. i hardly have to look to see what it is, i can tell by the yellow lined paper and the tears in your handwriting, addresses and words scrawled into the rips and i scramble to find more but theres only the two and how is it, months and months later, that now, in this cold office waiting for a meeting i dont deserve to have, using a purse ive worn countless times before and hardly thinking of you at all, do i find little pieces of paper you had drawn on, on that glass table in our rented apartment in buenos aires, the address of the church we went to on easter, the names and phone numbers of david and the cell he let you borrow, basco's address and the number of my editor in the states, your last name, drawn in cursive, and something i cant make out, ink faded and yellow cigarette torn, how is it that today, of all days, these show up and i hadnt noticed them before? i dont know whether to smile or cry, ive stopped believing that everything needs to be a sign for something so i dont freak out, i just use the back of one of them, the one with the least writing and write, i had to go and my number, leave it on the front desk with a girl whos teeth make me uneasy and walk out the front door.
its time to go.