handy justwrite

Get your hands from the handy-man as he pedals his bicycle down Maple Avenue, avoiding pot holes as if they're bottomless, puddles as if they're oceans. I have a map in my pocket, the world folded in on itself and tucked down deep where I can't see it, and a compass in the back of my mini-van which I left three blocks away, where the parking is free after seven and teenagers stand around at midnight feigning adulthood with cheap tomato and basil sandwiches, pretending the air is more clear at night because all the cars are parked, headlights dimly reflecting streetlamp light like they're about to fall asleep, wind blowing plastic bags sounds suddenly like leaves, dry, thirsty as a July afternoon, unexpected hiking, his palm slipping across mine as I led him up the hill and pretended either of us believed he was leading me. There were no clouds that day, not in our sky, where the blue spread so far we would have drowned in it if the branches weren't there for us to hold like ropes sinking in the tides, growing green with age while toddlers trip on the edge of the carpet, cheerios spilled across linoleum, constellations without names, waiting for us to claim them. I find a broom instead because I can't remember what the doorknob looked like when I couldn't reach it, my feet arching upward, barely touching the ground.