In the parking lot

The security guard tells us to make our drinks disappear, hide them in our hoodie pockets, and drink them elsewhere. He points around the corner and as we walk away he says to our backs, "And I don't wanna see you two again with those." He's a nice guy and doesn't mean it. Sometimes we all do our jobs, as ridiculous as they are. We're at the Oakland Art Murmur, a first Friday of the month art walk with street performers, open galleries, and sidewalk food. I'm brown-bagging a tall boy High Life and my friend Leyla has a bottle of something better. She doesn't see the point of drinking cheap beer and honestly, I don't know why I do myself. Cheap beer is kind of noncommittal in its watery nature; maybe that's it.

We walk to the corner of a parking lot and sit down, her back against my shoulder, and look up to a windowless brick wall across Grand Avenue where they're projecting film shorts. This is a perfect moment. The last of the blue is fading quickly in the west and a sliver of moon hangs to the side of an apartment building, its shadowed side still lighter than the night sky. The day's warmth is radiating from the concrete. I don't really know this person I'm with though it feels like I do. She's a new friend. For whatever reason, we're talking about the white lies we've told one another so far. There's another conversation on our faces and in our eyes.

As we talk it strikes me that I often don't use my own words anymore, or at least when it matters. I think in songs and books and I think with the old repetitive voice in my head and its distant echoes of my youth and the people I parroted and the revisions I made upon their ideas. I tell her about it and wonder if she understands what I mean, and then I wonder if I even understand what it is I'm trying to say. I feel happy and can't stop smiling. This is a perfect moment and I don't know why.