Cigarettes, Pimento Cheese Sandwiches, and Caramel Cheddar Popcorn

By some sort of dumb luck, my roommate gave me the right amount for a pack of American Spirits just a couple of shops down.

Funny the way things work out.

Some gorgeous tree dropped its pink petals towards the end of the cracked asphalt parking lot. The pale pink petals resemble Degas ballerinas in their tulle skirts and in their mayhem of falling, they resemble some sort of chaotic balance of order.

(“There is a ‘you’ shaped hole in the Universe”)

I don’t know where I belong or how I’ll get along in this world.

My ersatz kid sister doesn’t like the pimento cheese spread she bought the other day, she says it’s too watery. I wish I could make her some homemade, whip out my food processor (which is in storage) and make it from scratch. Perhaps using a shallot or a good red onion and some Red Leceister cheddar and a Neufachel cream cheese for good measure and a jar of smoked red pepper.

She preferred the Queen Charlotte pimento cheese spread for her sandwiches, the kind she bought from Publix a while back and enjoyed with great relish.

For her birthday, she received a dinosaur shaped sandwich cutter, I believe in the shape of a Brontosaurus, but come to think of it, perhaps it’s a T-Rex.

When walking back from the cigarette shop I saw a swell of gray cumulous clouds over the horizon of my halfway house. I’m waiting for a transfer of money so perhaps I can scram for a few hours to a coffee shop with my laptop and write.

I was grateful for my pop-tart this morning, cinnamon apple with apple crumbles on top. In my homesickness, I spied a bag of caramel and cheddar corn at the dollar store and decided to buy some. I know it’ll never compare to Garrett’s, whose warm bag of cheddar and caramel always tarnishes the blades of my small fingertips with its smears of bright yellow cheddar and toffee, but I had to do something. I just hope it isn’t stale.

This strange odyssey I’m on, the stubbornness of me with my heels dug so deeply into the ground, my ankles are hurting. I’m supposing my stubborn inertia will fling me back into the ethos of Illinois, back to those strange yet familiar places that fill my heart with a gorgeous ache.

I envy my kid sister, North Carolina isn’t too far from here but Illinois feels like its own strange planet.

The familiar dinging of the train near by. The transience of it all.