I wake up and try not to think about food, because the sky is pouring sun through my window and I slept hungry. I pour kibble into my dogs bowl, she sniffs it and walks around me wagging her tail. Waiting for me to eat, so she can eat. I can’t tell if she’s paranoid I’ll steal the food from her mouth, or if she needs to see me eat first.

I open the door. The day is hungry too, eating little clouds like popcorn. Laughing at the show beneath it. My stomach is relocating last night’s desperate pickle around its room, I gave it so much empty space to decorate. I’d give it an aquarium of wine and a proper sofa of a sandwich to sit on. Memories of east coast sandwiches cooking in the street, the smoke caramelizes the bricks of old buildings and draws pedestrians around them.

The fridge has some rice and beans for me. My stomach can start out with a rock garden. I eat a few bites and Mora eats some food behind me. Mora from a house where the landlord starved her and yelled and yelled at her. We never looked back at him, still in his house shouting at the television. Punching walls, wearing sunglasses after fights he’d lose at bars.

Hunger still in my gut, I leave the house. I want to feel the sun before its too strong. When it makes your teeth so hot it burns your gums. The road is open, full of parked students’ cars, no one else is walking down Farmer today. No one walks here unless they are forced. The road is too wide and vulnerable.

A student catches a ride on this tricked out ATV, college bar rap from its speakers. We look at each other, mutual spectacles with too much distance to convey a message. I want to tell him the spot he’s parked on is where a girl cut her self and ran bleeding over the streets, until an ambulance strapped her down and took her away, threatening to kill us all.

A few years ago, this guy Hausner and a buddy, drove around town taking potshots at anyone walking alone. The Baseline Killer worked himself into the fear of our homes, corner stores. The summer was burning us up, friends mad on booze and heat ruined each other. Shouting into palm trees. I was getting the DTs, and trying to get a ticket out of town. Today neighborhood streets are still emptied out, cars gasping over speed bumps.

I get coffee, to have an excuse to be around a crowd. It’s a bad, stale scene. Erections asphyxiate in their jeans. But sometimes I get a discount, and the noise is good for me. Places where you show up and purchase something, just to show people that you have a face and a voice. Somewhere in the city, you’re trying to breathe and feel good, just the same as them.

The old man asks me about the book I’ve got. An author in LA trying to make rent.

“I have a friend that lived there. Went from Arkansas.” He trails off, trying to give a memory to a stranger so it doesn’t die in his head.

A couple sit across from me. She’s got the bruise around her eye and regards him with cautious obedience. They got the meth itch, and he sends her on an errand just to get her out of his sight. She looks back at him, but he is focusing on his hands. Where do you go with problems this big, across from the table from you? While a girl tries get get a barista’s number so she can fuck the fashion out of him.

I get out before the blood becomes lead in my legs. The sun is still watching us, but its not an asshole yet. People are making signs, or biking. The sharp smell of an Italian restaurant, where the waitress can’t understand my appetite.

I go down to the best grapefruit tree in town, where the fruit rots off as the owner eats none of it. I’ve never seen who lives there. And I’ve never eaten a grapefruit from anywhere else. I wait all year for the grapefruit to be ready. I only take one, they are bigger than my fist. I pretend I’m in a land of abundance, I follow the sounds of birds and grab a full pocket of walnuts fallen around a tree. The dog park is busy, I keep thinking Mora could find true love there, if she stopped trying to kill them.

I owe too many people letters. I wrote my mother a letter a week ago, and still haven’t sent it. I’ve been writing a letter to a man in California for 10 years now. I wonder if he still is pissing in the sink.

Maybe I’ll finish his letter, and buy myself a meal. Freeze the other half and send it to him with the letter. He is probably just as hungry as I am, and the distance gets shortened. Hope he likes rice and beans.