A recent bout of passion put me jogging to the gym on Friday, carrying my backpack with clothes and lunch for the day. The route is not far but hilly, downward at first, flat across the valley where 12th flows and steep up the steps on the SU campus. It flattens again at the summit before descending quickly to the water. The gym is partway down that last hill, that hill which provoked the zipper on my backpack to give way, spilling its contents—the Palm, my jewelry, and other expensive items.

At the gym I upped the weight because I thought I could do it.

In the evening, we arrived early at Barca, our neighborhood bar, Pam, Angela and I. The background music is always smooth, unobtrusive techno, and the dark beer velvety like chocolate.

The next night, after making freezer jam with my grandma I drove home too quickly and wished I didn't have to stop for the night but just push through the short tunnel at city center northward and northward.

Instead, Andrew and I went west in his new car. We were like the night you never want to end driving like that into a new day.

We ate sushi at Sentosa, a small and surprisingly good little hole-in-the-wall. Sat in the window. Light wedged between us, and an arrangement of roe-gilded sushi dazzled like a tiara in it.

Later on the beach, in between conversation, I entertained tension between the undaunted blueness of the world and our position in it. Beyond was all sky—an atmospheric plane of ungraspable dimensions and blazing like chrome. Across the surface air flowed as water over glass and on it we were two flecks richly hued and opposing. Andrew in equilibrium both absorbed and reflected the light. But on my wavering the heat bore and it burned a little. I could not reconcile being at once apart from and of the plane, but afterward I think we fared better for our individuation, despite the blemishing. All those other people walking along the shore in cotton blues and whites were favored less for their consent. I imagine them dissipating into the salty air, eventually vaporized completely.

So this morning when I saw the sun was back and prying at me through the windows, I got up quickly to jog down the hill and through the students walking carelessly between classes and over the hill and beneath the freeway, bearing the day now with the climbing pack.

At work I requested a week of vacation at the end of June and it was granted.