I took photos for my feed, captured the LA light, the Spanish-style mansions, winding wrought iron, ocean on the air, which cooled at night to a deep desert chill I’d never felt before. All of it was so new, so utterly unlike Houston, my mother, the stale and humid library where she worked, the chronic complaints she made about her body—its size and shape and ailments—always searching for something to cure. I turned the camera to my face and spoke as I walked. “Gonna be a big staaaah,” I said and smooched the lens.
