As you reach a mountain’s peak, your weight slightly decreases as you get further and further away from the Earth’s core and gravity loosens its hold ever so slightly. If you have ever felt this tiny change in more than a physical sense, then this is for you.

This is for train tracks and box cars, this is for every road we planned to trip but never departed, this is for the difference between August and October and the first snowflake on my sister’s freckles a whole week before Halloween.

Because nothing is as sturdy as uncertainty. Nothing is more constant than the ever changing blues right before dusk in the summertime, where the deepest blue is just over your head. It’s the untruth of the moving target and the integrity of the unlocked window and driving through mountains during a snowstorm on Christmas morning to be home in time for my brother’s favorite joke, but I take the turn too quickly and spin my mother’s car into the woods.

Because I can only trust something viscous and permeable, and there’s this moment when you first see someone push their hair out of their eyes, or take off their glasses that is so identifiably human that I can’t get it out of my head.

The arrangement of my mother’s garden isn’t one I remember because I want to. I remember it because it held her hands when I couldn’t and the hockey game on the car radio wasn’t important because my father said it was a playoff game, but because it was a place we could exchange our thin ice for someone else’s.

This paralysis of analysis lives in the heart of transitional phrases.

I like when we are alone together.
I like to be alone with you.
I like to be safe and adventuring at the same time, when my head meets the mountain and my feet meet the rock.

my moonbeam mountain boots fell apart the moment I left home, but I picked up my blueberry pail and I took to the fields like I always do.

He picked up your knife and he stabbed a man in the stomach of his heart, where he kept his daughter’s pocket mouse nomenclature. He kept the cells in a jar next to his collection of Roald Dahl stories.

Probably. Maybe not.

I like when I can sleep in your bed and feel absolutely balanced. You tip my femininity when you scratch my back with your stubble before you shave in the mornings and it is so lovely to be near one who can cry.

I miss taking the train in the mornings and the subways in the evenings when I spent last summer  in Philadelphia more than I miss you.

I’m more confused in a way that forgives myself and I’m more creative in the work that i do. I’m more honest in all aspects and more understanding in my suspects.

You ran the maze past sanity and doubt
as if
your skies with the stone rock

could speak past a whisper.

I hid in perfume bottles notes to my old self
and I buried the harbinger dolls.

quiet boy stepped into my looking glass and handed me his helmet
years past until i noticed his long graceful hands in my hair
and i turned to see where he had come from

it was just past nine when i took the zucchini out of the oven and waited
it was half past ten by the time he rang the bell
and i sat nervous and shallow

he gets lost in his own world and finds his hands in mine
we stepped back from our maps and abandoned our ships
i sank in with the anchors

it was just last night when i realized i could love you
it was three junes since i first wanted to
i kissed you in the nighttime.

the shadow of summer haunted her like an inconsiderate ghost, but we had been sad since last tuesdays and it didn’t matter anymore.

it felt like a bouquet of “just fine, thanks” and burned fingertips and concentrated annotations of ethical etiquette, so we sat in our rooms and held onto our own hands until the buckets passed and we could all puddle-skip past the broken bicycles.

I love roller coasters.
I love the old rickety ones that jar my spine and push me into my little sister and i can feel our ribcages collide with the
click-click-click as they slowly build suspense and propel me towards the sun.

my last boyfriend hated them. He felt that his stomach couldn’t stand up to the drop of gravity so he ran at the sight of the climb up to reason and fled the line when i unbuckled my seatbelt.

i love waiting in line for a **** good thrill, and i count down the minutes until the spill of my scream echoes into the hairspray of the woman in front of me as she holds the hand of her cut-offs husband.

i guess you aren’t one to pine for the wooden tracks of thrill, either. but last night i lay in bed, on my side, trying to memorize the planes of your face, trying to calculate the angle of your nose as it leans slightly to your right, you tell me it’s crooked, i tell you it is lovely. it is the finest architecture this side of eiffel tower and you run your hands from the top of my collarbone, down the valley of my waist to the top of my hip, and you tell me you wish you had a tiny car to run along the line.

most of all i love the fall.

the cab drivers always look hopeful
and the bicyclists always seem scared
but it feels like my ribcage birdhouse could stay

it’s my version of home that lives in my chest
past the honor of winters plaid sleeves and silver glasses
it’s room for just me and my clothespin wrists fold up to fit inside
and my braids tickle my nose while i’m there

i can get anywhere from there
and it’s exactly where i always return

there’s a dinosaur on the corner of my favorite place
and all his friends remind me to stay happy
as they stand by and good bye the places i need to go


and i walk up the thousand and six stairs to the top
more alone than i wanted to be
and i am quiet
and i listened but that was the day that the city shut up

and i’m always looking for motorcycles out of the corner of my eye because you pause conversation to watch them fly by
and i know for a moment there your head gets lost

just exactly where you like it


or at least i think you like it