Many Happy Returns

I watched a pair of Roseate spoonbills fly over salt flats as I drove up the steep slope of a bridge.

I paddleboarded under the effervescent pink blooms of hibiscus flowers on a glassy lake, sunk my body into its bathwater-temperature shallows.

I flew out of a red, brush-spotted desert to a swamp all struck through with glimmering rivers.

I returned to Florida. But this time, only for a moment.

I didn’t expect it to hit me so hard. I was only coming home to fill my empty suitcase, to pluck out a few items to bring with me into my new life.

But I can’t get around it. It’s home: this, my land of people driving trucks they really don’t need to. This, my land where the beach is so hot your phone will shut itself down on its own accord, self-immolating to avoid irreparable damage.

I walked through Saint Augustine with the dense wet heat sticking my dress to me, pulling out my sweat and running it down my legs. I could feel myself grimacing. I’d gone downtown to punch myself in the gut, to take an obligatory Flagler bathroom selfie, to drive by that old house of ours one more one time.

I walked through the breezeway of my college and listened to its afternoon bells play the Beatles and the Cantina song. I walked past the bar I used to sit at, bored, while my parents got drunk on vacations — and which I later saw wall-studded, hurricane-gutted and gone. And past the next bar up, where I got drunk in college, and where, years after I graduated, an ex-professor bit the inside of my thigh on the balcony, feeding me snifters of Jameson to rekindle an outdated desire.

I got stuck by the Bridge of Lions not once, but twice; I listened to the sound of the whole air shriek with life like an estuary. I listened to the people in the cafes and the Castillo:

          I am so worried about college

          I am so over your bullshit

          Mom, I’m too hot

I thought: Everyone wants the same comforts, and everyone is capable of the same evils.

I hovered over the tiny glowing screen of my phone with my friend at the dive shop as we silently digested the betrayal of the faraway place I’d labeled home, pondered how far it was from an ocean.

I walked into the salt womb of the ocean and got instantly, irretrievably sad.

I’d forgotten: even in the heat, even in the face of truck testicles and MAGA stickers, this place does tear me wide open. I’ve lived here most of my life. I have done so much here.

I could let myself write a love song to Florida, and especially to this little seaside town. In many ways I’ve spent these past few years doing so.

But at the same time, I find myself anxious to fly back to New Mexico — in part to ditch the humidity, in part to finish setting up my place, but also because I find myself genuinely missing it, genuinely feeling like I’m away from home.

But my trip has made me realize anew how much I really am leaving behind here. How many beautiful people I’m lucky enough to call my friends, how many people I’m not nearly good enough to.

I will miss all of you desperately. I am serious when I say: please come visit.

I only have two more nights before I’m zipped back into the middle of nowhere, to Santa Fe’s tiny regional airport where I parked not thirty feet from the one and only front door. Between now and then: more time with friends, a drive down south for my ten-year high school reunion (!), and a few more hours trying to figure out what to cram into my suitcase and what to leave behind — i.e., how to restart when there’s no such thing as restarting.

Florida, I’ll be back. (Just not in August.)