After we had drunk our overly sweetened California tea and hurried a regrettably familiar goodbye, I hurried through TSA security to cry in the privacy of an airport bathroom. When I allowed myself to stop playing the morning over and over in my head (waking together, breakfast, laying in the sun, trying desperately to hold on to the remaining moments), I sat at Ruby’s diner and distracted myself with a tuna sandwich and the revision of an essay I had earlier written on pedophilia for my philosophy class. (Whatever it takes, right?) It was no surprise to me that I began to cry once more as the plane took off—I swear it’s because I’m a poet that my life plays out like it does and my emotions appear as they do. (Dana says I am a romantic comedy. I agree.) In my head I write these sad, awful fragments of goodbyes to the land where my lover now lives, and reluctant greetings to the city where I must return. I hush myself to sleep with a few sentimental songs that bring me back to the three nights I have just spent in his bed, and the way his fingers ran down my back as I slept. (One song temporarily wakes me and I break a few tears from the corners of my disinclined eyes, remembering this morning how I had rolled over to find him calmly staring to the ceiling, face streaked with tears.) When I awoke, poetic mess of head lulling to words I knew even in my lacking high-altitude slumber, the flight attendant was at my row-27- asking me if I, ma’am, would care to enjoy a beverage. With spearmint gum leftover in my mouth from takeoff, and the introduction of black coffee to my already entertained taste buds, I discovered that the combination created a flavor exactly like the taste of the spot where he sprays cologne to his neck. I told the flight attendant that, ma’am, I no longer cared to enjoy my beverage, and I hummed myself back to sleep with another selection of despicably lovely melodies that sang to me “all my silver dreams bring me to you.” But I’ve decided that, actually, I am more than content with this dynamic, that I would rather be impacted this greatly by a person than to merely exist unaccompanied and unmoved by my emotions. Goodbye California, take care of the man I love. And hello, Chicago; it’s nice to be home.