A young girl pays for her five-dollar banana bread in dimes and nickels only, and gets her sister to check her math when she’s done. The head baker tells me to throw away the burnt slices of Orange Chocolate Polenta cake into the compost. “Pa’ la basura. . . . Tíralo.” When his back turns, I rescue it, take a paper towel and lift the cake from the grave of coffee grounds, put it in a pastry bag. That night, when I turn it to face me, the inside is bright yellow, moist with bu

July 30 I make cake-pops for the first time. I upturn a delicious loaf of chocolate banana bread into a bowl, mash it with my hands until it resembles play-dough, then roll the moosh between my palms, pressing and rolling evenly, until little dark planets form in my hands. The young girl I'm doing this with is eleven. She wants to crack the eggs into the batter, enjoys watching the slime crawl down the metal bowl's sides so much that I tell her put in three, even though the

When I woke up, I thought it was still July. I thought I was at the bottom of the month's drawer, reaching for a few more things. But it's August now, and I'm at the top of the days again. I'm dizzy from the switch, and I have this feeling I forgot something, someone, but have no time to check. No way to go back. . . . I thought a twig was brushing my forehead in the pool, a tree's hair falling in my face, but it was just my own, thick and stick-like when wet. (Or maybe it w

July 27 I'm at the airport, buying a new charger for my headphones. In line for the self checkout machine, I point and say—"Oh my God, look!" The man ahead of me is pressing a cheese & cracker plate to his checkered chest when he hears me, and says—"Wow, I wonder how that got there?" Laying flat atop the blue palettes of gum, above the rows of stacked candy bars, is a half eaten chocolate chip cookie. It is uniform in color and pattern, a Chewy Chip's Ahoy, maybe. I look at t

July 25 A man with a sun-reddened face and gelled hair comes in around 10am. He leans over the display case, rests his forearms on its plastic top. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you here.” “I’ve been away. Back part-time.” I want him to know it’s not my only work; that, whatever person he thinks ends up as a barista in their thirties, I am not only that. I’ve missed the simple, full-bodied work of this place —the bending, the lifting, the bagging, and thanking. Whe

July 24 A green apple falls hard onto the garden sand, like a tennis ball thrown for no dog. The tiniest dog is tick-tacking, click-clacking across the wooden table at the Gestault Taphouse—in the back, where dogs are allowed (if they’re small. If they’re cute). When Collin puts down my glass, the tiny dog licks the foam off my Pilsner, poured tall in a glass that weighs more than she does, I bet. Her name is Eva. Eva's dad is long limbed; he could probably carry ten Evas in

July 22 I'm eating an open-faced sandwich–chicken salad, radishes, focaccia gone twice through the toaster. The grass I’m sitting on has, today, become the audience for a children's puppet show–The Magical Forest. To my left is a pile of fabrics and string, coiled on the top of the park slope. The deck, below (where I used to peer over into the creek as a child, where the toddler I first nannied bit through skin when I told him he couldn't go in) is the stage. On its wooden

July 20 A baby lizard, so small I can't imagine the organs, dashes from the street through my sandaled feet. I'm standing at our gate, about to roll the recycling bins back in. But I am startled now, at how giant I am. At how my feet could end a life just beginning, just like that. I remember a Mrs. Dalloway quote, something about how miraculous it is that we survive even one day. The stone path the cans must travel is full of California poppies now, their thin green arms hol

July 19 That three sips of coffee after 2 p.m. kept my body awake past midnight, the sliver of a moon out my window enough of a reason to sit up, get up, and listen to the nocturnal mammals of summer. That my dog and the foxes got so close last night, barked and growled—but still, a conversation. And that, on my lunch break I pass two panting, leash-stuck huskies in the sun and say, “Poor babies—who do you belong to?” And how right then, materializing from the shadow of a c