Ten Things That I Thought of on Your Birthday
1. Your cornflower blue eyes crinkled and laughing, sometimes flashing like the storms you love to chase
2. Your strawberry blond mop that smelled nothing like fruit but instead of sweat and grime, clinging to your brow when you removed that Pepsi baseball cap
3. Easter egg hunts on your birthday, like plastic flowers in melted snow and you up trees and on the roof of grandma's garage
4. Rare compromises that built tree forts or wound up the tire swing until it bounced and whirled its passenger like a spinning top
5. When everything you did, I wanted to do too--whether it was rescuing the princess or flying an X-wing
6. Diddy and Dixie Kong headlocked and tangled in armpits, wrestling for the Super Nintendo controller or for the remote for the VCR until Donkey had enough and made them both watch Barney
7. The laughter of you and your friends from the basement or slipping around the corner, back when I said “Me too” and meant “include me”
8. Games of war crouched behind the couches when the only war you dreamt about was the one in Narnia
9. The cliff in Hawaii over the smoking volcanic ocean water and Mom screaming for you to come down
10. When you push me, like the dominoes you used to line up and watch devotedly as they toppled over, one after the other because sometimes general incivility is the very essence of love
