The memory
comes back whole,
in perfect focus.
You and I,
brother and sister,
eleven and ten.
It must have been July,
after the fireworks.
Soft chords of darkness,
the stacatto notes of stars.
Close to eachother
on the low slope
of the garage roof.
I have a scab on my right knee.
You wear your brand new glasses.
"I can even see the leaves on
the trees across the street" you'd yelled,
coming in the door, not knowing what
you had been missing.
We both believed then
everything was possible,
believed we could invent our lives,
dream them up
on the garage roof,
then walk right into them.
Forty years later,
you're a thousand miles away
and I wake in the night
and wander out into the yard,
look up and suddenly remember.
I almost want to call you
on the phone,
but that is not
the way we are now,
living our distant lives
in spheres that rarely cross,
once every summer,
sometimes holidays,
skipping our words
across the surface
of the water,
never diving in.
Because everything
is not possible,
I want to call back all
we said we'd be,
see how our lives stack up.
I sit on the steps,
beneath the infinite sky,
trying to wake you, from
a thousand miles away.
-- Deb Cooper