Hello!
I'm finally at home after ten days away! We were in Gulf Shores for a week! And ran around in the waves and browsed souvenir shops and drank too many lattes and ate a seafood boil for the first time! And mini golfed and road go-karts and a mini roller coaster and played in an arcade! And went on a boat ride to see dolphins - after already seeing a bunch when we woke up at 5 a.m. to watch the sunrise! And we saw a turtle and a sting ray and alligators and little crabs and jumping fish and even watched a frog jump off Adam's moving car (R.I.P. frog!)! And we found shells and played Frisbee in the pool and and and!
It was so nice to get to have all this time with friends! To run around and laugh and play games and swim and wake up too early and stay up too late and just be together!
Adam and I also decided to turn the long drive home into a mini vacation extension. We took the route through Arkansas (which was a tiny bit longer but so worth it!) and stopped in Hot Springs for a night - we spent the evening walking around downtown and ate some great Ecuadorian food on a back patio built into a rocky hill with lots of twinkle lights. Then we woke up early and explored a nature trail and went to a bathhouse where we were unexpectedly separated and sent to different floors for full whirlpool mineral baths and steam rooms and hot towel treatments! The woman in charge of me said: you should feel like a cooked noodle when you leave here! And I did!
Then we drove a few more hours and stopped in Bentonville and had great coffee and one of the best meals I've ever had - ahi tuna tacos with a cucumber and tomato and mint salad and perfect fluffy rice (I want to go back every day!) And drove home through all the pretty hills. Arkansas is so cool!
Anyway, I'm still in recovery mode! We slept on the floor for a week! And the sun shined right on through the front door without blinds and woke us up bright and early! And I was beat up in the waves for days straight! And my skin is still dry as heck from the salt no matter how many oils and creams I put on it! And my whole body is covered in bug bites!
So, I don't have much to say outside of a recap of the fun! And my little poetry brain is not at its best! But here's a draft with a few thoughts from the drive because no matter what vacations we go on or how many people we're with, Adam and I still find the little moments (or big, long, hours spread through highways across the country) to just be the two of us. And maybe that's what my poems will be about forever: being in love! And being happy! And life being a little mundane when you're on the road but still good because you're with your favorite person! A draft:
WE TALKED FOR FOURTEEN HOURS STRAIGHT about love and the touch of it as it slips against tongues. This sentence is a repetition of itself but we talk a lot. I’m never bored as you say the same thing for the third time and tilt your hand with the motion of ideas. I love the sound of your heart, and maybe that’s The 1975 as their beat clicks from your phone but I mean it too. Yesterday we walked on sand until we sweat and something came out of me I can't grasp again, like more will always find a way to leave and I am a small boat in a bayou, using a new word because I know you like a vocabulary pull and I want to see you smile again as the sun sets in the direction you still need to drive.