(I am a bird.)

The summer mint has been cut, which means there are only traces of it wilting in the fields and those traces, they linger, and I can tell just how swell it smells (like heaven) right before the sun sets. Sometimes when I'm here, I think I'm still a girl. Ben Folds says it hurts to grow up. And we never do it all at once.

Which means, for me, that my heart breaks a little each time I come (here).

My grandma is ninety-two and I hugged her puffy white hair today as she sat way low in her wheel chair. She told me if she had known I was coming, she would've made a cake. Which made me giggle. Then smile. Then tear up because my grandma lives in a rest home and hasn't owned her own stove for six years now.

Tonight, I can hear Cathy Ernshaw say, "I wish I was a girl again."

I wonder what my grandma wishes. I wonder if her heart breaks and mends like mine.

That seems to be how things go.
Breaking, mending.

Mine almost always mends itself during the moments when I can see myself in my child. Incredible moments. Miraculous, even. Moments that seem to remind me that because I have him, and because he is mine, I have ties to magic forever. And whenever I feel too old, I have to remind myself, (or, he reminds me), that life is full.

And it evolves. And changes.

And it makes my grandma nod in disbelief that she's had nintey-two years that she's spent and tucked away, and sixty-seven great grandchildren to prove it.

And while she spends her afternoons drifting, Morgan's little toes are alive and his eyes are dancing.
And I'm dizzied and holding my breath, wishing time would linger. Longer. For a while.

Still,
the years go on.

For grandma, for Morgan. For me.


And we're still fighting it.

We're still fighting it. 

You're so much like me. (I love you.)