a predicted 1 to 3" of winter

I love that monumental moment when we're walking home from school and we're screaming and squealing, cheering and all tearing up,  because the sun is so hot, we can't feel our legs we squeezed into the tubes of our jeans that morning. They're all tingly and sleepy. We all run home, shave our legs with a purpose this time and we change into our shortest shorts. We walk around the neighborhood with nothing to do, but just to show the world that, yeah, we can walk around the neighborhood in our exercise shorts. And, yeah, in our bare feet.

Now I'm wearing my swim suit under my Sunday dresses.   I haven't taken it off in weeks.

Swimming replaces showers, chlorine and lake water replace my shampoo.

I haven't seen jeans in months, heck, I haven't seen a bra in weeks.    Swim suits act as everything now.

I'm not picky about the music I listen to during the summer, as long as there's lots of music to listen to.

                        I miss the crickets. I even miss the mosquitos. I miss having something to resist. Something not to itch. Something to avoid and something that gave me a challenge. 

I miss cars with roof windows. I miss when only the best friends got their own cup in our family's kitchen. I miss house guests. I miss our Arizona house guests the best. I miss taking them up the canyon to show off our trees.

But, most of all, I miss the sun. How it would warm my hair.  I spend all spring with my hand on my head, feeling for summer. You can go around all April, touching everybody's hair, waiting for summer to happen.

But this summer's gonna be different. Exciting, and so different. We're already buying maps of the South of France and I'm making a numbered list of who's farewells to hit first if they're all on the same Sunday.     Because, just as it happens to be, just about every one of my friends all have 9 o'clock church.  I don't know, God planned it all so we could all text at convenient times and our mom's won't even get too mad.

And, if everyone who even loves me leaves in this mass substance of teenage righteousness and adrenaline, then who will be left to love me?

You can't fuel freaking love purely on over priced postage stamps and electronic mail, trust me. Especially if it feels like they're not reaching anyone.  Like everything you've ever said has been last with the mexicans who search through your letters for anything at all that is valuable..   or they're lost out in space somewhere.. between a prayer to God and the internet. But, really, we're just trying to be positive here. When you know you're not the only one left in this world, but it still feels like you're talking to no one. 

Maybe, if there's no one left to love me, I'll have to learn how to like myself.

how

Sunlit Eyes

If you would've just gotten to know me, you could've known that I love yellow peppers.

You could've known that I only think there's 2 kinds of people in this world. Those who like Tim Burton, and those who don't.

If you ever would have asked me what age I stopped wetting the bed, I would've honestly told you it was ten.

But you never really asked...

You told me my eyes were sunlit, but you never asked me how I saw you through them.. What I saw, when I'd see "us" through them. I would've told you that, through my sunlit eyes, I did see us. I saw swangirls, with clean white hats and fish-print dresses. I saw dark trees with painted, tree houses and I saw floating islands and free sweaters.. I might have told you I saw us skinny dipping in lakes and I saw our barefeet walking on pavement that burnt us.. but you never really asked. I always wanted you to ask.

And, if you ever had bothered to ask me if I'd rather have kaleidoscope eyes or kaleidoscope ears, I could have honestly told you that I'd take the kaleidoscope ears anyday. Cuz as I lay in my field like I do every summertime, I can already see the stars collide with the leaves on the trees. And, these sunlit eyes can already see the color that lives on those planets beyond..

And, if you ever cared to wonder what goes on in my sunfilled mind you probably would have known that I don't see shooting stars. I see the Gods fighting, and having wars. And I see those burning handfulls of gas as hate-mail... and ransom notes.. and "get-well-cards" and wedding invitations and junkmail... and Love Letters.

But the Love Notes are those stars you seldom see. The ones that are so burning with the sun, the ones that are kind of blueish at the end of their flight... The ones that fade the fastest, those ones you almost always miss.

I always imagined us lying in that field watching the Gods and Goddesses licking their envelopes and pressing on their postage stamps.. and I hoped a letter would fall a mile from where we lay. and that we'd walk the whole way together, and that we'd never run out of things to say. But you never even heard me, because while your ears were plugged with the worlds headphones, me and the sun were screaming at you. to look up... To look at me.

(Brynn Hallsted)