What Ifs

I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!
-Alice in Wonderland

No success riding bicycles today, as the chains unleashed themselves, flying high into the air, aereal kites made out of raw iron ore. We walked this beautiful port city again and again; I could walk it a 1000 times. The streets are (cliche?) cobblestone, the old houses of bright Caribbean colors, despite their Atlantic spines. As I walk (forward?), I try not to look back in anger, like that Oasis shrine to which I danced and bawled out my 5th grade loves. I try not to look back at all (to yesterday or yesterday's yesterday).

Last night we ate at a restauarant with a button-clad waiter, with a hot-dog hat and a cloth napkin rabbit. We ate that fine, French vanilla ice cream and drank a bottle of Riesling. Needless to say, neither of us have much tolerance and we tottered home in such laughter I blinked back unsad tears.

We sat on the beach, on the rocks, with our mosquito-bitten legs outstretched, sharing things I blush at thinking, let alone allow to slip from my Skittle lips (yes, skittle, the lipgloss I won at our Wait Avenue Oscar Trivia last year). Uruguayans are serious Mate fiends, which makes me flower with smiles at least a dozen times a day. My favorite flower of life lies on a tiny, spindly street here, wide, wispy, orange with a chocolate core (of course).

Julie, my Faulkner-loving friend, is leaving tomorrow. Sad. It will likely be months until I see her again, but soon we will be British neighbors, in garden land, with our very own Mary Poppins bicycles.

What do I love here? The tinyness of it all; the professional pharmacists (seriously); the warmth (in every which way); the what-ifs. What do I not love? There are sicamores here too, with their spotted spines and sucked-dry leaves, bent over in branded age.

I am intensely curious about Montevideo and looking forward to a few last days in Buenos Aires (writing, steak). I cannot believe (do I want to believe?) that I am going home. Although I am excited, I am afraid of what will await me there, of those unavoidables: those true ghosts, not skeletons, not sicamore sighs.