Am Montoya was alone in my house with me for more than 24 hours before we spoke to each other in sentences.

She was the internet friend of an internet friend's internet friend.

After one real conversation, we shared a sleazy motel room and a hamburger and a malt.
She bled on my front porch and stuck a knife in her mouth. We covered her in pomegranate seeds.
She wore my hair, the shirt off my back, the color of my cheeks.
I dropped her off on a corner of a street I did not know. We sent text messages back and forth until there was silence.

(These are not metaphors though they could be.)

I have shared one or two photos, but she was (is) confusing to me.
She entered my life in a wavering moment,
caught me jumping between two skyscrapers, looking not forward or back but at my own hovering feet.

Me, un-characteristically with a less-than-solid base and her, certain and shy and literally without any place other than mine.
It was what we both needed. It was Kerouac-ian without the lucidity or the chemical concoctions or the highway lines.

It felt gratuitous to share more photographs of her, knowing that a portrait often suggests stability of The Has Been.
I never knew Am. I shared space with her. We made things together. I genuinely respected her...
But with a never satisfied curiosity.
We were both sad she had to leave town. It was as if we'd bumped into each other in line at the airport bathroom...
and nothing more.

I know better than to trust my memory of her. She changed her name before my eyes (and ears).
Our friendship was interior and coincident. Together we laughed like travelers and roommates both.

(Not long after her stop-over I moved from the house in which she visited me.
That is not a metaphor either.)

And truthfully, I wanted the keep the nature of her short visit (hours? barely!) inconspicuous in the 2-d world if nowhere else.

But now she's returning to Texas. I cannot share my favorite photographs of her. That's my best unkept secret.
These can do for now.

Am Montoya