Something So Clear

It slips through us. It’s river water and empty paths and the smell of dried flowers in the hills up behind your house. I wonder if I will always be here, always still be there. Did I slip through a crack, see the future in a dream, will we both wake up soon?

There is something so clear in this time of year. The way winds blow and force the planes to land backward, the way they kick up bad ideas like fire starters. Something is always burning somewhere. The horizon a brown ring. The last bit of sea before the horizon line is called the offing.

I imagine you taking her to see the sunset in the same kinds of places and having the same kinds of beer and that girls always look pretty near wildflowers. The question is, why do we care about, what we care about? At least someone is watering the house plants.

My mother calls the dog by the name of her boyfriend before my father and I am struck by the sureness of how some things never leave us. Names we whisper when we are young are sewn into who we are. And someday we will both tell stories of the places we went and it won’t hurt so much, and we will just be someone we loved when we were young.

I am not entirely sure what the key is, nor why it seems to allude me, nor where I buried it, or why I dream of it. I wonder if others have it and slip easily into joy like they might a nightgown. I wonder how cold it is there in the mornings. I wonder if I could, if I would go back in time. I wonder how she says your name.

There is something so clear in the air this time of year, it’s pressing on me. It’s waking me up in the night and I go for a walk in the near dark. We are everywhere and nowhere. And it slips right through us.