Run Away With Me

I waited because my memories of you tasted like summer: lemonade and watermelon. They shine with sunlight and prick my feet with emerald blades of grass. Do you remember me from that time?"

Then the sun begins to set and the shadows reach across the ground as nighttime begins to take hold. We, in our bare feet, scamper our way back. We can never forget the way back, no matter how hard we try.

We stop to admire the way the sunset paints the clouds and in our hesitation, the wind catches up to us and ruffles our hair. Rain is coming. We are not afraid.

We sprint out of the pause and the rain pelts us. The heavy droplets invade our clothes and trickle down our scalps. The distant mumbles of thunder tumble through our bones. We are not afraid.

We get home. We are laughing. Our footsteps squeak against the ancient wooden floorboards. Mawmaw shakes her head at us from the kitchen. We're soaked. We feel more alive than ever.

We go into the bathroom for towels and we sit on the edge of the tub as we wring out our clothes and shake the water from our hair. Then we rinse the mud and leaves off our feet.

The smell of supper parades through the house, drawing out the appetite in the both of us. We join Mawmaw at the table and we eat. We tell her of our adventures in the forest. We tell her we are not afraid.

When supper is over, we go into the living room and sprawl out on the floor for the few minutes before bed. We plan our next adventure. We are not afraid.

I want to go to California and explore the ghost towns out in the desert.

I want to go and leave a plate of cookies out on Goatman's Bridge.

I want to take eerie pictures of empty laundromats at 3 in the morning and record video diaries in the back of a trailer with my closest friends.

I wanna go and drive out to the middle of nowhere, where the land is flat and open and dry and empty and I want to star gaze on the roof of my car and be filled with a new kind of yearning that I've never felt before. I want to see things I've never seen. I want to feel what I've never felt.