Hello, you are a foreign place. Small, but large enough to satisfy the hunger pangs I've got jirating my ribcage, unable to let me hold still. I dream in waves, salty ones that stay on my tongue after I awake and I notice things that keep going and coming back, all with that same familiar smell. It's like the metallic scent from a beach full of shells, water on concrete, it's subtle and sometimes romantic because it's not a scent you sniff everyday, because if you saw that beach everyday your nose would get used to it and would no longer bat your senses like a cunning lash.
Granada, we don't know each other and perhaps we never will, but I'd like to think positively that there is a potential room in your city that will accept me for who I am, maybe allow me to grow a little. Maybe you'll even open up your arms--just a little bit--and let me see what makes you thrive. I promise to be gentle in this coming-out party, you me the awkward two strangers in the room studying each other with comfortable reluctance. There's still time to come alive if we give each other the chance.
I smell those beaches in my head, with waves pushing a current that is far from over. Sometimes the shore slowly swallows the sand I have my feet pressed into and there's nothing else to do but swim or go home. But sometimes I'll walk along that shore, as it grows smaller and smaller, until I've walked the entire coast in less than half an hour. Then I go home. Or I wake up. Then I want to go somewhere.
Granada, I want to go to you. And I warn you, I'm clumsy and awkward and brilliant. Just give me a chance to show that to you and we might be best friends for life. Or at least you'll have great advice in leading me to the next place in this long, dramatic quest. I'll do my best to entertain you.
Yours indefinitely,
Tara A. Sherman