so easily i forgot lifting the sandbox in arizona and catching the geckos and keeping them as pets and on halloween candies jack o lantern their tails would fall clear from their bodies and we d shriek and we d run keep on playing playing my sister she is with me even when we are apart we were wading through the water flashlights flickering in the dark climbing the laundry poles in the tomato garden spying on all the neighbors swimming laughing we were laughing that night in maine i met my best friend talking til 7 a m realizing we re both afraid of the notion of having our brains be in the body of a whale in the ocean deep where the light don t reach and i loved him instantly i knew we could keep talking talking on that drive up the winding mountain roads from hudson to vermont in the seasons where snow the boys asleep in the back of the car we were in the front we were singing along to every word of the songs that helped make us who we are at the top of our lungs singing singing my mother my mother she keeps a journal of her childhood memories as they return my favorite s the story recounting when she saw an eagle with a fish in it s mouth she was ten when she wrote it down there s a sweetness in us that lives long past the dust on our eyes once our eyes finally close