Red dust from the trail
plays in valleys through your hands
My heart remembers

Maybe
if I can capture you on paper,
I can keep you.

You see,
I had hoped for the memory of you
to fade with my summer tan
but now I find myself greedy,
indulging in thoughts of you like a child sneaking chocolates.

I am thinking of you
sitting with me on a lumpy twin bed,
and wanting so badly to memorize you.
I asked if your hair was course or fine.
You let me run my fingers deeply through it
and there was an aching and a hollowness in me,
knowing your palate preferred a more balanced plate.

I never had you.
But I did, didn't I?
Just for a paragraph, but that's alright
because it belongs to me.
Iis mine to take out and taste in spoonfuls
or in buckets, or to stifle in a wooden box,
but it will always seep through the tiny fractures
and spill onto the page
because
that is the power of memory and words.

I remember the happiest moments of my life,
cherry-picked, freeze-dried and
stored by my subconscious, round and shiny
like Christmas ***** where I can see myself,
distorted but still smiling,
freckles in the same places, me but not me,
moments where love overflows from cooking pots
on Thanksgiving
and the steam of family dysfunction
rises to the ceiling, peaks, dissipates,
and when I leave the kitchen for a seat at the kids' table
I forget it, and later
the smell is washed from my hair by a pair of caring hands,
perhaps not so caring
if they are my own, and I squeeze my eyes shut
so the soap won't get in
but it does sometimes and I don't cry and I feel
like a warrior, perpetually battling the unfair,
like why am I the one with glasses,
why can't you eat ice cream before dinner,
why do grownups get to stay up so late?
downstairs drinking wine and spilling stories,
moments from the beach that day, sand and salt
hidden in unlikely places, sticky fingers, joyful exhaustion,
golden laughter of seeing cousins,
dreams and seaweed tangled in my hair,
dyed pink in high school but only an inner layer,
a half-hearted rebellion,
maybe the hair equivalent of a post-it note saying
notice me! but please don't judge me.

Why should it make me sad,
to watch the wind move through the leaves
of an elm tree in late May,
a great green cloud against the bluest sky.

Or to smell the sun heat the asphalt,
and tiny globes of sweat and Coppertone on my skin -
the golden smell of summer,
of knees skinned and healed and skinned again,
of sun-faded flags,
red white and blue dancing mounted on neighbors' porches,
neatly folded and forgotten the rest of the year.

Or to sit in my backyard
in the receding light with what is left of the day,
and listen in utter longing to the katydids
humming their summer incantation.
And wish, that if I could only bottle the sound
as I once did the magic of fireflies,
that repairing loneliness was as easy as opening jar.

The clock's ticking and my
eyes are dry but
there's things to be done
there's bodies to be prepped
and files to be filed
and people are dying and living
all around me
at least there's still tea
in my thermos

I have stared at
the girl scout cookies
on my desk
for weeks and
never taken one
out of the box so
long they have
been there I
think I can smell
them through the
package

that is strength
today, I'll take it

Today I am happy
That's all I have to say
Even though
there are dishes in the sink
and my milk's gone bad