Happiness comes slowly
weaving its way through the butterflies in your stomach
as you step into the hall, seeing
all the open doors
wondering which to knock on, who to know.

Then it’s diagonal crossing
and shaking fish. It’s a group picture that still hangs in your best friend’s room to remind you of how much you can age in a year.

Suddenly it’s the ballet and lingering looks. It’s drunk astronomy videos, and tea with second intentions. It’s well developed boys with delicate minds, who are more hurt by misthrown words. (I’m sorry, still. Those months of silence did a number on me too.)

It’s red lips and falling leaves. It’s pulling yourself together out of the pieces spread around campus, and creating one rule: don’t **** DSig boys.

Then it’s floorcest, but this time more wholesome. It’s meeting the man who’s sure to be your best-man at your wedding, and wondering how you could be so similar, could love someone so much. It’s being scared that people aren’t puzzle pieces and losing one to gain another is never the same. But then realizing that maybe the original piece didn’t fit that well to begin with.

It’s a long night at the hospital, because family is family even if you never share secrets. Because sometimes cheez-it crumbs can heal souls.

Then it’s snowstorms, and gossip nights. It’s living with your best friends 24/7 and picking each one up as they threaten to unravel. It’s chugging earl gray and crying over gluten free brownies. It’s getting used to a pseudo-something only to have the ground shift under your feet––again. And then it’s growth. It’s loving other people enough to know when you’re wrong, when to let go.

Finally it’s peace, and midterm cramming. It’s shedding layers of skin and coats so the sun can finally scab over your innocence. It’s making the exodus from your room to hole up in a coffee shop and write, because the school listens now. It’s knowing that so long as you know how to cover a hickey, you’ll never really lose your status as mom.

It’s loving. Happiness is loving. Every stolen moment and stupid, idiotic escapade; every too big personality surrounded by too small quarters.
It is holding fast to the spirit of youth, letting years to come do what they may with the tattooed six on your heart.

Herefords lying down,
***** to the wind - this bodes of rain.
Cloud gray and anvil,
clobber shot and some ways off,
a cliff falls precipitous.
There's manure in the air
because it's November
and the harvest is in.
There's manure in the air
for the fields need a feed
before snow tangles the greeds
of Autumn, and the Aberdeens
crush stubble leeward,
beyond the spruce breaks.
And there, atop a shaved hill,
a misthrown cone of gold,
shoveled by the shade hands
of gamblers in the **** winds
jangle in a pickup.