To the elementary school. To the middle school. To the high school. To the .html files I stole off your computer. To the miles I spent with you on opposite sides of the middle seat, leaned against opposite windows. To the Tylenol. To the Alleve. To the last time you’ll nudge closer to me, still half-asleep at noon.
To the woods. To the pool. To the gym, because you never ever go out of your way to run. To the edge, but never quite off of it. Towards me, but never too fast, because a novel path can’t be well-trodden.
Into your eyes. Into your hair, and it sings for you. Over your hair when you visit, and it eats with you. Over the world, and it follows you because I do.
When you’re limp-stringed, wedged sideways between my bench and my wall because I dragged you there, swallowing like a frog and twice as catatonic as I need to be. When you’re alive. When I’m almost dead. When you’re just resting and nothing is happening anywhere to anyone.
For me? For yourself? For our mother, for the next twenty years? For the next thousand at minimum? For the sunlight, for the silence, for the monotony of a laptop propped on your stomach and headphones clamped over your ears? For the last fledgling cowbird in the last nest of the last blackbird to take its first flight? Just for a little while?