She takes the young boy’s hand,
hurt by the wagon pull, and holds
it in her own. The day is hot, muggy,
a typical western Pennsylvania summer.

She comforts him. Wipes away the sweat
and tears, looks at his hand, recognizes
the wound, and then his eyes, so much like
her own.

A dizzying feeling arises, the way one feels
when standing on the edge of a subway platform
and looking up, the first butterflies-in-the-gut
when coming on to a hallucinogen.  

Tripping once in the Santa Cruz Mountains, he
was convinced that he’d died, was killed by a
hit-and-run driver and his body lay lifeless on the
side of the road in Brookdale. She nearly died
in Felton 30 years later.

That night, he’d noticed the way the light of
a street lamp turns redwood trees into
giant, false replicas of themselves.

She hears a dog moaning in the apartment
below hers. He is startled when his cabin door
bangs open and the ******* retriever stands
there wagging his tail. No one knows who his
owner is.

The black retriever would sleep in his 65 VW
bug if he left his windows open at night. She owns
a 2000 VW and as far as she knows no one has
ever slept in it.

In Brookdale one summer evening there is the
sound of couples arguing, the crash of broken
China. He comes out of the cabin, a woman follows
behind and body-slams him into the pyracantha
bush. He lays in the pyracantha laughing as she drives
off in his car. He looks up and sees an older woman
smiling at him. She reaches down, takes his hand,
and pulls him free.