I have vague memories of climbing into my sleeping bag, the puffed sleeves of my nightgown bunched around my ears, salt on my lips, the smell of wood smoke and sisterhood teasing the air. When I share these memories with my mom, she tells me they’re false.

If I closed my eyes and focused my senses, I could pretend the birds chirping in the distance were the same ones that woke me up in the mornings, and that my mom was just down the aisle, planning dinner and watching me through the corner of her eye. 

Might our wishes be to say, something we left unsaid, / To those no longer with us, upon wispy clouds they tread. 

There was distant laughter and flames that offered no heat / only illumination of faces that will forever be unknown.

Boys named Dallas or Austin just don’t last that long, I know, / big dreams hailing from rusted-cars and unmowed yards. / Little aspirations mewing from a heap of rags in the abandoned shed.

I’ve always thought that summer was for ghosts, or at least for / the empty feeling of cotton candy placed on your tongue by the boy / who loved you at fifteen but by sixteen had forgotten your name.

Windows represent a sense of inquiry, illumination, and insight to me. Some of my favorite windows have been Tiffany-stained glass that I can gaze at appreciatively, the expansive floor to ceiling windows in my Oakland home from which I can see the rugged landscape and sprawling cityscape, and the small windows on an airplane, where I can travel through the clouds.

As the lone hyperactive child in a family of indoor kids and the daughter of a mother who wasn’t the type to “play,” television became my medicine. Ritalin to control my nervous energy, Lexapro to soothe my anxiety, Prozac when things got depressing.

If time is like bright beads / on a string, I hope / it tangles a bit, so we can meet / each other / again.

And I suppose it’s also life / To get old by mistake / While trying to express / Who you truly are.