Feeling Frisky
Today at my house, the air is clean and so is the brown grass. You get off work early and drop by, red clay still on the knees of your jeans. Barefoot, we run to the steep hill where scraggly evergreens dot the field. We flop down together under the sleepy blue sky, and your arm reaches around my stomach. Your hands are rough, chapped from the wind, but it doesn’t bother me one bit.
In the winter, I tell you what I really think, and laugh loudly. You point to which clouds look like Robinhood and Little John, and when I disagree, you tickle my ribs. We are restless schoolchildren pining for summer.
After the last frost, I will take my little shovel and break sod for the cut flower garden. It’s for the wedding bouquets. It’s because I am convinced it’s a worthwhile endeavor to promise your life to someone. The white sun is hot as we daydream about cabins, dinner parties, and babies, but the chill of the damp ground keeps us from catnapping. Daylight is scarce.
Earlier this winter, we went to a funeral on my birthday. She was an old, old woman, an aunt of my mother’s. Behind that little mountain church, I held your hand, watching the grandchildren smoke cigarettes and play in the soggy patches of snow.
The generations of women before me are a heavy weight on my chest. You showed me a picture of your great-grandfather once, as he smiled beside his wife. The same softness is in your eyes now, and it brings me courage; I think this can be a good life. The air burns in my lungs this time of year, but somehow the promise of you numbs me, and warms me, and gives me a new strength.
Lying in the grass now, I trace your crow’s feet and whisper every name I’ve ever loved.
Like wild mustangs, we’re frisky in the winter, tossing our heads and turning quickly on our heels. Every decision— the lonely early mornings, the overtime graveyard shifts— drive us closer to a life, sometime soon, where you and I can run up the hills untethered. The sound of our galloping rings ever clearer.