May 24 short camping justwrite

The skin between your teeth is glowing in the dark, and I plant mushrooms in your footprints and tell stories about growing in shadows but really just want to remember where you've ben so I can find my way back to the intersection of our identities, where the sand beneath them is crossed out and I dance chalky fingerprints up your arms like lace. There are moments when I can only hear wind. There are moments when the blood pressing tides against my eardrums sounds like the ocean, the salty water I poured onto my bruises, trying to wash myself back into myself, wash off the sweat of strangers. Minnows dash by my feet, silver shooting stars, coins falling like a wish into a fountain. Their lips are tickling my toes. You catch them in your teeth, laughing, your mouth swallowing the sky and everything below it in one gulp.

Russell Justwrite 9--finals justwrite

A bunch of tools in my belt, at least one of them a spade, or a spoon I use to rip apart the roots of two sweetpea stems sprouting too close. I tear them apart gently, the way I cut through seams or pluck daisy heads or snap the damp necks of butter beans, summer beans, smelling like rain and bitter soil packed down by bare palms and bare soles. My father edges his garden with mums because it keeps pests away, but I think it just fences them in, traps them in the middle where I find tomato leaves chewed to lace, squash blossoms casting shadows like the old screen door. I still hear it slamming at night, know how the wind sounds like visitors, rushed, or angry maybe, letting go of a spring-hinged screen door and only thinking about the eyes closed above the kitchen the next morning, when a woman slips down the stairs while the lights are still out, wonders through the pain why her foot lost its way and decides that adults don't cry. I remind myself of this when I press my dry cheeks against my window screen and focus on the darkness outside, wonder if this taste in my throat is what the bugs feel when they find a row of mums, and I swallow, searching for the bitterness of summer beans, damp summer air, finding nothing until I reach the ocean, tear my spade from my belt and start piercing roots with its blade, not wondering how I've grown so close.

outside blowing bubbles justwrite

Bare mountain is the one you can't see. I tell Lindsey this while the wind takes her bubbles and brings them to me. My palms are open, facing the sun, thinking about how light can pass straight through wet hands. Mine are dripping soapy water on my thighs, drops that look like rain until you teach your eyes to focus, realize you're closer to everything than you imagined; the space between the trees is almost itself a tree. There is nothing separating us but skin that melts like frost on an April morning just as it meets the sun for the first time. These days, I think about fading, about watercolor landscapes where I can't find my footprints even if I squint, where the soil looks like sand looks like sky. I thought I saw your face once, but it was only a cloud. Lindsey looks up when there's shade, searching, and I think about her footsteps every time a faceless stranger in the hall walks by with keys that sound like bells that sound like winter is over. This is the season of fading. I wake up expecting rain but find sunlight shining through soap bubbles and wind that imagined it is colder than it was last month. This is the season where what is warmest rises first and all I feel is what swoops in to take its place. Lindsey thinks her ivy grew leaves before mine. Birds land in the vines and cough up notes that make me smile and then startle me four minutes later when my ears have moved on. A tiny bee lands on my knuckle. Its wings are transparent and look like empty space, look like wet air with light shining through. Every day lately is a new season, and all of them are fading.