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