After class I sat outside the church and watched old people in barets and canes walk very slowly around the church. Just going for a walk, I guessed. It was possible to get some cafe con leche somewhere, or to buy a pack of cigarettes from the self-serve machine around the corner and smoke next to the water-proofed speakers arranged in the bushes, which played classical music during lunch, while looking up at a statue of some man.

The wind was so strong over the ocean the sea gulls seemed to float over it like paper airplanes. If it wasn’t for the cliffs I think I would have tried to catch myself a seagull the way my brother and I used to chase after fireflies in Brookside, so focused on grabbing them we never noticed when exactly it had gotten so dark.

I got my first existential crisis, crying, skyping my parents, reading about the Spanish penal system because I was pretty sure police and jail had a lot to do with the difference between us, not the way I spilled the herbal tea all over my hands—the hot tea—after I took out my contacts, or how I forgot how to cook. I used to know, but I forgot.

I can’t seem to remember anything except the light between the stairs growing longer as I climbed more stairs and grass the size of palm leaves sprouting out of a sculpture of a lamp shade. Even in front of the ocean I was just a mess of long distance relationships and now what was becoming increasingly outstanding in my mind was the place.