Missouri

The Cardinal

Without hesitation she said, “Oh my gosh, that is sooo Goggy.”

I felt peer-pressured to watch, and honestly? I’m embarrassed to say the appeal made sense to me.

She lets me kiss her side, an act I recognize in the moment as fleeting magic.

I’m trying to capture the same curiosity that led forty-two men westward to see what exactly the world was that unfurled for miles ahead of them.

But when a place is hardly (if ever) depicted, a place can be stereotyped into invisibility.

What if we chose to invest like we’ll be here for ten years or more, and that investment became a reality?

He put his clippers down, walked around the chair, sat down on a bench facing me, and put his head in his hands.

I don’t use Instagram or Snapchat, I don’t work sixty-hour weeks, I don’t watch Game of Thrones.

As the game went into double-overtime (that’s a thing?), I was stress-eating a Pop-Tart when I finally realized I was being ridiculous.

For the past week and a half I’ve been staying at an extended stay hotel in St. Louis, which was not a concept I was familiar with until I booked it.