pioneertown.

To me California had just been a word; one that stung the roof of my mouth with the acidity of a lemon. A word so popular it had begun to garble, the meaning lost, the mouth unsure if it had ever spoken correctly before it.

To me it couldn’t matter that her sun was warm like the breath of my mother, her water lapping like a cat's tongue. Because to California, I always knew, I meant nothing; her sunsets had been gazed into with lover's eyes each day before this, her praises thrown up into the breeze until they, too, garbled among the seagull's call.