10 Day Count-Down: How it Feels to Wait

Copying out the list of every book in the library on Paraguay. Planning to read them all. Barely managing three. Trying to imagine myself in a land were women once chewed, spat out, and fermented the remains of corn husks to make drink, where missionaries stood behinds curtains and smoke to convert with visions. Each day waking to decide there will be electricity, there won't be electricity. Too sad because I'm leaving them for two years to visit or call friends until the last week, when we can only say goodbye. Meeting prophets on trains, and looking for prophets on trains. Walking in spirals of miles around my home trying to to breath in and memorize the exact scent of September here and oak trees (there won't be oak trees there?). Too exhausted or afraid to leave town until I leave town. Buying seven shirts, returning six. Not yet able to buy luggage or the right size underwear. Forgetting each day to make the important calls. Staring at life insurance forms and wondering where to find two witnesses to the hypothetical division of the books, papers, and hand-me-down dishes I leave behind. Trying to decide who is important enough or annoying enough to hypothetically inherit this collection. Re-reading Pride and Prejudice for the thirtieth time. Breaking in the heavy leather boots. Finding a new part of my body aching each day and then healed the next. Opening travel guides of South America to find Paraguay missing--the heart plucked out or hidden from sections on the surroundings: Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina. Finding one Paraguayan restaurant in Queens. Imagining what recipes I will make with only corn, yucca, meat, cheese, onions, beans, and tomato. Eating lots of kale. Visited one night by a ghost at the edge of my bed. A woman in a white and black polka-dot dress who I have never seen before. Who breaks into a million shivering gray pieces when I call out to her.