When the sun sets I'm 7 again, where dreams melted like rocket popsicles, push pops, hands sticky, stained the color of the sky; purple, pink, yellow, orange, burnt red. Sometimes I bring myself to a swingset, and just sit. I peel back and push my feet off the ground, kick my legs and hope my skin doesn't stick. That tree isn't there anymore, but I was in a different world then, a long-distance country, where you were here and I was there. The Gods above blessed me with wings, smiled down and lifted my eyes to blue skies and deep seas and the heavens as one with here and there and the in-between. Higher, closer, I'd make my way to the clouds, the sails, soon cathedrals and Ancient Greece and the Tower of London with the Eiffel Tower from peak to peak. My hands curled in stretched white grip. My knuckles and bones holding onto another side where I was free from you and me and this whole damned world. God, I didn't want to let go. I closed my eyes until they hurt, and let my head fall back, my hair mid-twirl, brushing the sand beneath and the sunlight that danced rays of white and gold in the mess of watercolor. Back when I was 7 again, where the beach was as close as the park, the water fountain, the ocean and a sandcastle as real and sturdy and naive as a disney tale, you and me. Where trees were an easy climb to the top of Mount Everest; the world in the palm of your hand, in the smell of the forever evergreen pine breeze and view of the city, so small and weary. Back when walkie talkies were your best friend; top secret missions took you to the Sahara, a camel and the sand and those boys from next door. Football every year, those boys don't know me, a girl can play just as mean. Summertime meant baked lemon chicken, a call from mom, the sun still high, baseball with fallen pine cones, the goal: that mean dog-haters window, backyard, mom and dad won't see. The pool, as rough as the Indian Ocean, no place for a doll and its tupperware boat. But that didn't mean you didn't want to see someone else sink, not me. The frontyard with all its leaves, plants with the goopy saliva and broken trees; a medicine cabinet, a chef's kitchen, if you may, brewed potions for a childhood of young love and magic and time's relentless chase. Sun tea with lemons and things lost and forgotten beneath the blue tides and the backyard tent with s'mores and tumbling, jumping, laughing high into the night kids. We'd walk through the center, sure and unseen, broken boards to the right and Jack and Rose and the Titanic with all its ghosts, loyal and brave, "I will go down with this ship," you'd hear them say. And you'd say. Where pets deaths were your first glimpse of this hard, sunken world, and they meant funerals and flowers and the whole neighborhood brought together for kind words and seances. But no one could replace that friend, or that curiosity in the glimpse of what death meant and the finality in that underground sentence. And in that california sun, and its cruel high noon, where you and your bike took crusades to save the orange and black caterpillars, the butterflies of its day, that couldn't make it to the cool pavement, the broken shade. And then you'd close your eyes and pray, and cry, and hold your hand out with that stick, scared to touch a creature so unlike you where moving faster didn't make sense, could not be done before the day was done where wings were grown and the sun and wind understood. I guess when the day was done, feet slipped, they struggled to kick, but could not kick. And the sand dragged down your limbs and eyes so high, until you and I were making circles with our eyes and we jumped, 1, 2, 3, like a bird in its first flight. The sand crashed in a tsunami wave, shielded our eyes from our otherside where we were young, happy and I was who I was meant to be, young and happy with wings, colorful and free and understanding of death, the sun and wind and the in-between.
And yet there was no white flag above our door. I'm sure that that makes sense.
