Lonely Girl Travels

Granada got me all literary…

Bus ride: Sheets of rock like shoulder blades, knobby fingers  pointing skyward in an arthritic ache.

Granada: A town that still rolls its clattering shutters down for siesta, where people lean on bars at lunchtime, where crayon-colored graffiti makes the edifices seem all the older, and more opulent.

Outskirts: Tatiana lived on the outskirts, the broad chest of the Sierra, where  grey blocks of buildings stood stoicly, white-washed walls and flat stone streets filled with people coughing, crossing their arms as they walked to bus stops beneath rain-streaked towers, windows crying mascara tears.

Thursday: It was a moody day, a voluptuous pout of wind and clouds.

Balcony like a prayer: The rain thins, the clouds ascend, and the city sharpens like a reflection in an unfogging mirror—tiled roofs that arch along the spine of the mountain, the grey domes of grey cathedrals, the red crane of steel-boned construction. The birds chatter invisibly from the inside of trees, like children at recess, high voices rising above the thunder of the drainpipes.

Boy at the party: It was the way his shoulder moved beneath his tshirt, how his sneakered feet would pigeon inward, the way his veins vined around his forearms like twine, down, down, to the thick fingers that, unlike yours, were uncalloused and clean.