All intimacy was exchanged as if in a foreign language, via gestures and quick, mistaken glances on the train.

Sonora 

By Hannah Lillith Assadi

I've wondered if I'd ever write here again and it doesn't make any sense to—I'd imagined by this point I would've translated this effort to another, more modern medium as Blogspot becomes more and more irrelevant.

Now that I am in a months-long spree of clearing out my apartment and donating many of my books (only deciding to keep what I love or is useful longterm), I'm returning to the marked pages and words I meant to note before I make my donation to the neighborhood library stand.

Sonora made me quite sad, actually. And while by this point I don't really remember any of it, I do remember that it felt heavy, like a dark cloud looming. But there were a few descriptors that stood out.

"Laura turned to me. She had amber eyes. They alighted from her deeply tanned face like a beautiful curse. Her hair was streaked magenta. "I'm Laura," she said. She pronounced it the Spanish way, though no one else ever did. We sat there quietly observing the others. Laura hummed a tune dreamily as if I weren't there at all."

(p. 11)

"Like faces, the smell of a person cannot be replicated. The smell of a fire in my hair from a particular party, the smell of a friend's perfume rubbed into my shirt. The smell of lipstick and chalk soaking the dressing rooms at dance rehearsals. The smell of a lover in your fingernails the morning after. The smell of my mother: orange peel, suntan lotion, faint vanilla. The smell of Laura: lavender laundry detergent, danger, linger of red wine, sweat, cigarette. The smell of Eli: the smell of seventeen, of the beach at night, coconut, white blossom, salt, stars. The smell of Dylan: vodka, fire, dirt in autumn, February in the desert. The smell of my father: Ralph Lauren Safari, cumin, tobacco, spearmint, musk, red meat. Home." 

(p. 64)

"I felt happiest in my exchanges at bodegas over the purchase of a coffee or cigarettes or when observing the break-dancers twirl and the mariachis croon. All intimacy was exchanged as if in a foreign language, via gestures and quick, mistaken glances on the train."
(p. 102)