Is everything we are
who we are when we're four?
To laugh and to learn
and to always want more?
Is this what it is
to be nothing but nine?
To have dreams and worries
but know you have time?
Is this how feels to be only fourteen?
To be talking all day
but no one hears a **** thing?
Then is this what it means to be seventeen?
To have plans and dreams
Though you haven't started a thing?
And is this what it is to be twenty one?
to have all this time,
yet feel as though there's none?
So are we these people
from the start to the end?
The same or different
or some kind of blend?

I want to build a fire.
Want to lay down beside her.
Want to sleep under the sky
Far away from streets and lights.
Want to fall into the earth
Sleep with no one, only her.
Dig my fingers in the dirt.
Help me remember I am earth.

She was the big dream we all shared.
We snuck in through the windows
and walked through the rooms.
Each claiming one for our selves
or describing how we could use another.
We would lay on the carpet,
playing cards, telling stories,
or most commonly planning.
Planning where the garden would be.
Imagining what the summer nights
would be like with the stars and
the lights from the front porch.
Mixed with the warm air
and the boys playing basketball
in front of the garage.
Maybe we would get a dog.
We would have to refinish the basement.
I wonder if the dishwasher works?
We would be so happy here!
Was said at least once every visit.
Then eventually we would line up
to slide back out the portal we had entered.
Back to being seventeen.
Back to being poor,
back to the trailer for me.
Back to their grandma's for others.
But this quirky, empty house
slowly being engulfed by the earth
she was all  of us.
Purple walls with blue cat prints.
Pentagonal windows knee high on the walls.
Abandoned, weird, but special,
this one dream we all shared.

This day stays mostly in flashes.
A snap of a white dress,
My beautiful cousin laughing in it.
A glimpse of a sunset,
magically cliche as it sank into the lake.
A brief wave of white Christmas lights,
and barefooted dancing on wood floors.
And before even this
there was a walk.
A walk between some kids now past eighteen.
Each with their own wine glass,
though each was sampled by all.
Even Jacob, who is half past fourteen.
And they all shared laughs
as they shared stories,
while they wondered down the crooked path
tucked into the crisp hay field.
And they shared blood
every hour of every day not just that day.
But they could all feel it pumping,
on that evening in October.

Will it **** you
when you get the invite to my wedding
not to be a maid of honor
not to be a bridesmaid
but to sit in the rows in any color dress you choose?
And will it **** you
when my christmas card comes
and I hold a baby you've never met
who has a godmother that you've never met?
And will it **** you
when the internet shows you
that my family has moved,
and I've started a new career,
but you aren't even really sure
what line of work I was in before?
Will it **** you as these years pass
and this title becomes wholey exact?
Or is it okay because
I won't know you either?

You make me want to write
stupid little poems
about how you wash my hair
better than I do.
Or about how I can't sleep
when I'm without you.
Or about how sometimes
you carry me wherever we're going to.
Because I guess,
I think its pretty cool.
And you're pretty cool.
And this is all sort of magic.
But that doesn't mean
it makes good poems.
But like everything
in my life, my notebook
is filled with you.

I wish I had leukemia,
because then at least
I could explain
while I'm always so tired,
and sick, and moody.
And no one would say
"She's not even trying to get better."
or "She did this to herself."
it would be CANCER.
And then I could die
and people would just cry
instead of saying things like
"She didn't even ask for help."
or "It wasn't even that bad."
At least if I had leukemia
I would be allowed to hurt
and maybe I wouldn't feel
like such **** about it.