Good Night Admiral...

"through narrow skies
Sapling died white
over time
with each step the years shed
until there's nothing left
and we're at the end...the beginning again

..talk to me"


I remember the Chinese lanterns flowing in the June breeze. I remember the bugs flying in the darkness and the choir of bug lanterns sounding off in the distance. I can still hear the loud voices of the adults, whose faces were red due to a mixture of too much alcohol and too much sun. I remember my sister and I playing tag and hide and go seek along with my cousins. I remember the way it all would end with people packing tupper ware and weary eyed kids into Buicks and Pontiacs, beeping horns and waving goodbye while my parents, my sister and I would walk across the back yard, through the white rose covered trelis and to our house. I remember listening to the moths flutter against the screens as I drifted off to sleep, thinking this is how it was always going to be.
In a conversation I had with my great-grandmother (who owned the house the cookouts were held at) I talked about bringing those parties back. It was an attempt, on my part, to try to salvage the way the family was before people sort of wandered off and stopped talking. I finally convinced her to have the parties again. Not long after that conversation she went into a nursing home and the house was sold.

I remember laying on the grass and looking through the weeping willows, up at the blue sky, imagining walking on the clouds as I moved my sneakers so it looked like I was standing on the sky itself. I remember her giving my cousin and I cookies and us having inside jokes only he and I would know.





...sometimes I still try to walk on the clouds