Branches Book

BRANCHES

But it's also nights in January when the ocean looks like glass and the sky above it looks like the shower walls after the temperature leaves imprints on the plexiglass door. Driving down PCH at 5:30 on a Tuesday, the steering wheel turning like choreography to a dance you know by heart. The sun is dipping below the horizon and the cars along side you seem to be chasing the light, and you're one of them racing for daylight on the long drive home. And you think about how the highway creates your best poetry, and you've never understood why your parents warn you to be wary of it

because for you it's the backyard you first learned to play in. It's where you first saw above the trees out your front window and got your hands dirty with the thrill of the solidarity.

Seven Seventeen

And we laughed-

whole heartedly at one in the morning, dancing around the kitchen in our matching pajama shorts singing the anthems to our femininity at the top of our lungs. In the back seats of our cars with the music loud to match the noise of the voices in our heads. Over the spilled tears of our losses and our damages and our breaks

as we stay together and move together across these hallways and through these streets. And we laughed, god, we always laughed. we loved the music, we loved the songs that we sang loud and we sang constantly. we loved the places that came to be ours. we loved all of the days that we spent together. all the first days of school,

And we loved-

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