Your Fate…

You will love the rainy season – the weak, low light – the gray.  You love wrapping your hands around a cup of hot tea while watching water drip off the spruce and fir trees in your yard.  You will enjoy baking, and you own more sweaters than are strictly necessary.  Of course, you have a cat.  But the spring will eventually arrive.  You will board a cheap flight to Acapulco, where companionship and drink and the Mexican climate will warm you.  There’s a bartender named Fernando.  Your pale skin reddens in the sun.  It’s your birthday.  Memory will fail at some point, lost in a hazy wash of liquor, saltwater and sand.  Eventually, you will return to the clammy Northwest.  Your apartment will be lonely and cold. There’s cat fur everywhere.  Your rent is overdue.  Your skin is falling off.  You pick up your phone.  It rings and rings and rings.  You despair…  then a click, the sound of wind, and a voice, “Bueno.”  Two days later you will deliver your sweaters to Goodwill and your cat to the shelter.