I moved to Palm Springs from Los Angeles this year and haven’t found my way yet. It gets cold in the mornings, to my dislike. I wait for the heat to come and bring me pleasure. As I sit here, outside a coffee shop in La Quinta, the cold winds burn my arms. It’s May. It shouldn’t be like this, but it is.

But it’s only six in the morning. I woke up at five like I always do. I set my alarm for that time. It’s a haunting piano tune on my phone. I should really change it because it scares me. I don’t know what to do with myself in the desert. Sometimes, I daydream about living in a trailer in the middle of the sand, saying, “Forget about a nice home and all those responsibilities,” and going to a trashy diner where no one knows me. I could go back to alcohol. No one has to know.

Where I live, crows dominate the apartments. I don’t know why they’re there. What’re they looking for besides dead squirrels? I know it’s a dark premonition when they fly around me, like a bad fate is coming my way, but I just deal with it as it comes. How tragic can the result be? The crows mean nothing. They’re just another bird.

I walk through downtown, past the little shops and restaurants. Summer is near, so the northern birds have escaped to Canada before the heat—the real heat—eats them up. I’m glad they’re gone and I have the desert to myself. They take up too much space.

I stare ahead at a gas station with the canyons in the background. Another crow flies by. What is it with these goddamn birds? They’re everywhere. The desert is what it’s supposed to be: barren. I don’t miss the traffic in Los Angeles. There’s none here, of course. No one wants to live here when it’s one hundred and ten degrees all day. I don’t mind the heat as opposed to the cold. I say that now before July when I’ll be sweating from the moment I step outside.

The cars begin to collect at the drive-thru. Coffee shops have them now. They didn’t used to. If you were old enough, you would’ve remembered them without one. People sat outside—hipsters, bohemians—and drank their cappuccinos as they talked about trendy bullshit. They smoked their cloves at the tables and snuffed them out in ashtrays. Now it’s all gone. Coffee shops go by corporate laws. They’ve chased away those people as far as I can see. Where do they go now?

I’m at Adams Street and the 111, the highway that leads to Interstate 10. The sun is brightening the brown canyons. Palm trees shiver in the cold morning breeze. I ate an egg sandwich this morning with an iced mocha. It had bacon on an English muffin.

Not a single soul walks by on the sidewalk. No cactus is around either, and cacti are abundant in the desert. But you know that.

In another month I’ll turn forty-seven. Being forty-six was a bitch. I don’t look forward to growing older.

The people are nicer in the desert. They accommodate me, but they’re not perfect.

The breeze is slowing down. Pretty soon, the heat will strike, and I’ll be sweating out here, wishing for the cold to come back.

The blue palo verde, the peacock flower, and the lantana wiggle in the wind. Some of the petals have been blown off, leaving just the green leaves. The sun hits my back, and I feel warmer now.

I’m going to hit tennis balls today on Mother’s Day. That’s if the tennis courts are open. You never know on a holiday like this.