I imagine my friends as walking holidays, days that roll off souvenirs like sweat
and become keepsakes in a suitcase that breathes sunscreen
onto my white, hopeless skin.

Green grass is Rachel. When I want to invent
cloud animals, I think of her old backyard, five miles down the road
because it was good for such things
the kind of things that open your pores and your mind and your chest all at once.

She would draw on my eyes
while we sat knee to knee, or knee to something else soft.

I would try to become a model for the world as she understood it, wanted it
and hoped she saw the sky on my eyes,
tinged with magma when I got sad and could no longer take sleep.

Then, there was a day in the alley. A murky place
with brown weeds between concrete, and she was there, too, but she was not a
part of the memory I have somehow –
she only fits against the sunshine and clear air. I remember her most

when I want to lay down
on a blanket without needing to rest and grow a garden without using my tears as
a fertilizer for the only beautiful things I have ever created.