The All-American Nomad's College Life, Excerpt 4:

“The Things I Left Behind”

I found you; you found me. A stumble, a class, a drink, a show, and we were “we,” like pick-up sticks or a puzzle. Autonomous, but together; some nights, some days.

Thinking hard, racking my brain for dropped clues and scattered memories, I can’t remember how I got here, speeding away at precisely 535 miles per hour, 37,000 feet above the sea. I am confused and petulant and scared. I want to still be feeling new with you, waking up in your bed, looking at Orion triumphing over the night sky through your bedroom window, breathing in the smell of you sleeping, very different than how you smell when you’re awake, more powdery with sleep-dust and dreams yet still pungent of man; a smell so specific and so arresting that once a hint of just a note of it could stop me dead in my tracks on the cobblestones of Church Street. A smell I could pick up like a bloodhound, even in a crowd, even when you’re not around. Your pheromones speak to me in an ancient tongue of attraction, and I understand it fluently.

Thank you for letting me go. I need to find a "me" before I find a "we."

XOXO