Yeah, I remember you
cherries popping in your mouth, my
cherries, fireworks, pop rocks in your cheek
citrus cream on your tongue, vaseline
on mine and the way the electrical outlet
looked up close next to my sweaty palms
with bobby pins embedded in my knees
fresh out of the shower, pear extract clinging desperately
trying to keep me clean

May your birthday be
A special day for you
For everyone to see
The memories  you share too.
Because you’ll smile
And then you’ll laugh and cry
Though after awhile
You’ll have memories to think by.
You get pretty
Every time you glow
Prettiest lady in the city
Because this I really do know.
Just have a lot of fun
With your day filled with pride
Especially for everyone
Who’s right there by your side.
Happy birthday
And many more to come
This is to say
Where this is coming from.
BY Scotty Bruner

I once asked him what it was like--
when  making love made sense
when it left you in a glow and
not like it had me, in coils of
skin and apple scented oil
sobbing on a mattress in Chelan--

I can't help but ask as a precautionary measure,
I'm sure, the way people ask was it good for you too?
did it mean anything? were you making love or having ***?
he says that's what breakups are. Not talking, letting go.
forging a bridge and then leaving it to decay,
I'll just become bitter with that long sideways glance
I've stopped memorizing his face because it's been sad
for a month,
i asked myself
if i traded a friendship
for a kiss at a cabin and
i wonder if he feels the same
because he let me in before
the promise of my body
and the sight of me as
a friend is too much
to handle.

Once, I told him that I was not hysterical and he could call me
he answered what's up kid as if his voice had dropped, but it
hadn't. I replied submissively and he told me that it would not
work even though I did not truly want it to in the first place. It
was so silent on the other end I could hear his car running. Here
to stop on the hill to talk, the cul-de-sac with no cars where I once
sat between his legs and did unspeakable things on the porch of
someone's summer house. He wasn't sorry even though he said
it twice, I made sure to count. I could probably account for all his
apologies on one hand, the entirety of our two year relationship
was one. They say you lose them the way you gain them, so I
must have fought too hard both ways coming. He said goodbye
twice and meant it, where my mom found me curled up on the
swing by our old house. Drenched in sweat, it must of been 80
outside, I smelled like paint, we were redoing my room. Summer

is so hard now, Maroon 5 on a Chelan boat. The memories are messy.
What was that, three years ago, now? I am still startled by your name
in my phone, by the notes I still find in boxes. I've kissed a few since you
anyway, but I still remember the way your neck felt.

I hope that this day
will be special for you
in every way
until this day is through.
With a lovely smile
and personality too
Your love and style
will shine right through.
A sweet person you are
as for the love you share
will go real far
it shows how much you care.
Have a heart of gold
nobody can deny
It can’t be sold
Not even if you try.
Without her love
what could we do
to her we can think of
to say happy birthday to you.
BY Scotty Bruner

You sat with your hands dangling over the stuffed leather booth
I sat across from you with a **** eating grin
We had a huge sundae in front of us loaded with extra cherries on top, just the way we like it.
Now you can find us sneaking extra cherries behind the bar to add to our whiskey sodas.
Drinking all of the whiskey down so quickly the cherries end up being futile.
Long handled spoons in hand we dip into the lactose filled shell and scoop large mouthfuls like shovels. We talk at the same time as we chew.
We are older now, but we still don't care about manners or laughing too loud or how we really want to get whiskeys instead of this belly ache of sweets.
We inhale our singular bowl and aren't shy about who gets the last bite.
We leave.

We are back in your sisters house and I'm sitting in the same part of the kitchen that I sat the night that I drank too much wine and threw up in her front yard.
Not much has changed except that her children are older.

Chloe isn't bouncing her creepy Dolly head from couch cushion to couch cushion in the living room.
And your dad isn't there with Nancy commenting about how old I am now.
And I'm not secretly wanting to throw punches at Nancy, but instead throwing back glasses of wine.

We still feel so connected in a way that I have never been able to put words to. I've tried in the thousands of cards and letters and sentimental moments. That is what is so difficult about feelings towards someone you love deeply. Words are so finite.
I decide I want to try with words anyways. I want to share with you how much you've meant to me all of these years.

Before setting my alarm and falling asleep to the sound of rain
I had been having an existential moment. Well, lots of them, since I found out I would become a mother.
Not only was I growing someone in my womb but I was deconstructing and rebuilding the one I had become.
Awake I couldn't stop thinking about all of the moments we had been through and how we survived them all. We still love each other through it all.
Awake I became aware that you were as close as I could get to having another sibling.
Not in a cliche "I love you like my sister type," but in an innocent wild green way.
We still had it.
That part of us that did not let the world rob us from our wild selves, our hunt for nature, our questions that we weren't afraid to explore together even if it made everyone else uncomfortable. Our sensitivity...heightened sensitivity to everything around us.

Back to my dream...

Somehow we weren't at your sister's house anymore. Now we were on the dock of your mom's house and I told you how much I had been going through.
How much I felt myself changing and that I had to let you know how much you meant to me.
How close in my heart you remained and will always remain.
I told you that you were the most influential person during my teenage years. I met you the year I found out that my father was struggling with addiction and had to go to rehab. I met you when I was the most alone in the world and the most confused. I had never had a friend like you.
I met you and you picked me up from my house in your green Honda when I had been AOL instant messaging my ex boyfriend and he told me I had rats nest as hair. I ran out to the driveway crying, after of course brushing the curls out of my hair. I was really sobbing about the fact that my father was in rehab and I wanted to disappear behind the crook of my closed bedroom door.
I met you when I was swallowed up with insecurity around what right thing was to wear and should I shave my legs once or twice a day.
You introduced me to Goodwill shirts and letting your hair grow as long as you **** well wanted.
We became close friends instantly.
Through our twenties we floundered in a lot of ways. With ****** men and divorces and affairs and despairingly drunken nights and moments we still needed to be chaperoned. Our innocence shifted.
We became aware of the world and how it really was.
Then we decided we wanted to do something about it.
The foundation of our paths have always aligned.
I told you that you offered me freedom and relief and that when you were having a hard time sometimes I couldn't be there in the ways that you needed and when I was having a hard time you couldn't be there in the ways that I needed but none of that mattered now.
None of it ever did.
Because our foundation was still there. Like the marrow in our bones.
I hugged you and told you that you are still that person to me. That you still show up for me in so many different ways, just by who you are as a person...not even what you do.
That here I am going through one of the biggest moments of my life and that it all seems like it is going to be okay, because you are still here. With me.
Your sister. Your mom. Connor and Chloe and Sig. The smell of eucalyptus. Your light beaded dangly earrings. Your square shaped fingers and toes. Your hairy legs. Your voice belting over Aretha. Lake Chelan. The way you make tea steaming up to our noses. How impossible you are to wake up in the morning. Armpit bangs. How we have held each other with words, with arms, with history, but mostly with acceptance and understanding.
I had been told by a client a few years ago that if you hug someone for over 20 seconds that your heart aligned.
What a pathalogical sentiment am I right?
ha
Anyways, in my dream we hugged and our hearts turned a bright yellow and glowed from our chests.
They left our rib cages and
Circled around my belly
She felt the warmth and knew
as she entered the world
She too wouldn't have to be alone.

And then I woke up.