The way plants come out the rocks that sit in pools at their feet.

The way the wind speaks when it comes through our garden before a rain.

The way you run into the house when it does, sand still in your toes shoes in your hand.

Once, there was a plum tree. It hovered like a cloud in an old lady’s black-fenced terrace.

The lady took one photograph of the tree each year for its birthday to remember the day she’d planted its seed and posted these photos like magnets onto her fridge door.

 Each winter, the tree shivered in the wind, restless and alone.

It feared it always would be.

Stems hold perfect petals that droop. Crimson dust is sprinkled on insides and buds stick out like tongues. Drops of rain sit quietly on their edges.

The way it twists on itself, curls up, then reaches out.

The way it cushions itself from all sides.

Come closer: the trees’ branches hold others, hold even groups of leaves that each branch out. In the after-rain wind, the tree’s leaves move in clusters like hands in a wave.

You ate mountains of ice cream and loose corn chips lay singled out on your big silky bed. Don’t tell Dad, you said while we slept.

It all happened in passing. We almost forgot the whole thing.

Sunday evening and the cars still speed past our yard. Through the neighbour’s barred-up window, I imagine her sit as she listens to this, our fights, the cold fall wind as it sweeps through.

The solitude of her one piece of toast on her one kitchen plate is almost enough to swallow her whole.

Sunny Saturdays in June and the screen door never gets shut. The boys are out back building their own little world out of rocks, branches with leaves still attached. They give themselves names for just this place and fill it with kings and dragons.

No one sees you here as you watch from your kitchen window.

This ant scurries down wooden garden slats into dirt worlds like he’s crawling into bed. Here, his whole world circles him like piles of spiraling towers. It becomes him as he chases himself in his work, inward, then out.

When I’m old, I’ll stand as tall as that tree that waves at me in the wind, its branches deep forest brown, as brown as the insides of the Earth.

When I’m old, I’ll stand tall of the edges of this planet like two leaves that meet, then branch out like butterflies.

Rain and white petal parts still sit in pools all over our yard. It’s almost summer, and wind carries the warm smell of rain.

The crows nearby still shout, waiting.

Even though it’s June, Christmas lights still crawl up our twisting backyard tree. They light our faces in the almost-darkness of this almost-summer evening. We dim our voices and bring our chairs in closer. It’s the pink petals though falling in our teacups and hair that keep us out here, waiting.

It’s dark out now and you rearrange things—pillows, books, glass of water by the bed. The dim lamplight hovers by you as you read, scratch your head, cover your own familiar body landscape on bare chest with bare searching hands. Inside the book and under covers, you fold in. Let yourself fall into the story like pillows on soft, dewy ground.

Evening comes down like a ceiling. Water drops stick to falling leaves as they hit a neighbour’s car, pedestrians hold hands as they scurry home. The mountain’s snow caps aren’t too far to still see as we pedal quickly through these streets, not quite dark, not yet raining.

There’s an orange sun that sits on clouds above the house across the street

from where I’m sitting. Evening’s air’s so still

trees’ leaves shudder at its touch.

My neighbour hurries home with her hands full.

The almost-darkness chases her.

It rains and we all go inside. The monks across our yard move from room to room, turn lights on and turn lights off. One puts his coat on though, lights up the garden as he leaves out the back with the dog.

This is how it all comes alive.