Canopy of gray. Caught by old cigarette smoke. Arrested by resting. A tired day. I wanted to run wild through the trees and dig up old soil, smush it into bricks that would fit my wrists. Nudging them together feels easy, like a memory. Ancient groves, body remembering. Smearing dirt cream and soil paste between their stacking. I wanted to grow the lumps of sweet color I’d cut open and drink in. I wanted you to come with me. To remind me that clay firms when it fires. I wanted to run wild through the trees, like I did after school when I was thirteen. Young with the sun, seeing how close and fast I could get without grazing your touch. I wanted the cold days with you. To make a humming rush of burning we could gather around, like the cellular joy of our forgotten sky, like stars that putter through time, now with wandering satellites. Planes some nights. Flowers shoot up from the ground, hairless twigs through the winter, begin their bloom. I remembered today about the blue petrol that pushed me through the jungle, rumbling unknowns, skin melting uncertainty they tell you to fall into. While the womb overhead opens so painfully. But now I know, about wanting you and the blue and the wisps that sing splinters when the sun falls. I want my hands to weave stories, I want my breasts to cry songs, I want the animal’s call and the days to make themselves, while I follow their sun tracks, their pawprints in the dust. The bird’s howl. Our knees brushing together.

I was going, I was going, I was walking along. There were skyscrapers in my head from long ago. I turned them on their side and walked over the water. Bridges of glass window pain that open to the valley of my spleen. Where the trees whisper golden tunes and birds weave spirals of protection. The emptiness would plume with forgiveness.