Stars on top of stars on top of stars. Blankets of silver snow. I unzipped my sleeping bag, the one I got for 15 dollars at a yard sale in Monterey. I brought my knees to my chest and thought about my friends and California.

Emily was living in a small apartment in Arcata, with a little garden out front that had dandelions and mint and some tomatoes. Everything in her apartment was either bought at a garage sale or on craigslist. Her mom gave her everything else, which was really only the bed and some silverware. I liked her little brown teakettle the most. “Isn’t it cool? Five bucks at a garage sale in good ole’ Moghetto.” She adored these things more than herself and embraced the simple life she held, her bike, garden, and lack of almost everything entirely.

She had taken the semester off to travel, but she never went anywhere, just stayed in that garden all day, boiling water in the kettle for God knows what. There wasn’t money to go anywhere, and what she got from painting fences or apartments was easily spent at the market on chicken, nuts, hummus, eggs, or rice. My God it was wonderful to see her move around that miserable apartment, showing me every little thing she had.

I flew my plane over these little hills
and thought about my life. I saw all the cities,
Arcata, Eureka, Redding, and an incredible
violet glow along the northern coast of California.
21 years old. I landed in a town that was lively
with families and college students. I sat at a
café near the ocean and the sand, cold from
the winter air. I no longer felt empty
when I saw a pretty girl holding hands with
a handsome young man. That used to disturb me,
but in that moment, I was satisfied
with the Milky Ways of my wanderings.
I read my books until midnight
and decided to lay on the starlit sand.
Golden flicker of lights about my kingdom.

I am alone again, flying over Eastern Tennessee in my small plane.
Below are fields, fields of weeds and cows and horses.
There's nobody to save me if my engine declines to turn.
Punching through the soil of the sky,
above little houses scattered like sand.
"What the hell? This isn't an airplane, it's a cardboard box."
I can't fly this. It won't work.
I need to get out.

Clothed in unwashed rags,
my body was 20 and inebriated by the journey
I had inherited for myself.
I was on a bus on 101,
heading north to visit a friend
who had been going to school in Arcata, California.

Passing the spectacularly long grapevines,
I wrote long, unending sentences
and hummed them to myself as if they were prayers
from droplets of light above.

And in my long periods of silence,
I thought of what I would do when
I finally arrived at the northern coast.
"First, I think I'll take my shoes off
and dance around a little bit
and dip my feet in the sand.
I'll howl skyward, with my only friends,
my body and the spirit of the sky,"
and I did.

Dad comes home from work
and we drink beer on the deck,
droplets of light
gazing at us from above.
We are gods to them.

While watching "Little Bear" in the morning my grandma would often consider the obituaries and mutter things like,
"Marvin! That old *******, I didn't know he died."
She would sip her coffee,
unable to see a glimmer of herself in others.

I'm fond goodbyes
and waving people away
as if from the bow of a cruise ship
while confetti showers fall
with the horn blowing.
Or similarly,
the method in which
a boy loses his ballon,
by setting it free entirely.