Daily Rescue #9, August 5th

1. 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.

   
   

2. 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 butter. Perfect.

   The cake’s edge is the only place I hesitate. Where my mouth slows. Black and rough as asphalt, just poured.

   
   

3. I try to remember our last real hike: the trail where I could have said, This is the last time, remember this.

   
   

   I think of Oakwood in Mill Valley: the ferny shade and fairy houses built into the wishbone chests of trees. I remember the fire road called Crown for how it must look to a hawk, high, high up, wrapping around the forehead of Lady Tam.

   
   

   I love these places but must tell you, I don’t want to walk in them; not without a wolf-dog ahead of me, or just behind.

   
   

   The world felt like ours when we were together in it. We formed a world within the world, some country of paw and foot and come here, that made venturing out, and out, feel close, feel possible.

   
   

   Soon I'll have to let this go—watch the animal I called mine become the earth's again; the world I called ours become the world's again.

   
   

   Watch the woman I called his become a woman again. Come here, I will need to tell her, over and over. Come here.