Home Free

I want to build us a thick nest of sailor masts, seawater, and stars

I want to run through hollow quarries with you and echo each other's dreams against the stony walls

Run my hands over the quartz crystal. They will resemble the rocks inside your pockets

Meet me where the sea massages the mountains

We’re cocooned against the train car

You're looking up at me with this swagger with your hand curled on my knee

But then you crack a girlish smile and I'm giggling again

Be my train hopping wife

My partner in adventure

We're traveling light and living earth close

Your eyes are sparkling at me

Doing what they did when we first met

The moon beams and bounces across the glass

Buy a small house with me

I'll learn how to build you as many skylights that will fit the ceiling so that the stars can sleep with us every night

The garden will be at the foot of the front porch and I'll grow enough green peas and peppers for our giant salad bowls and forget me nots will bloom and form mousy stubble at the edge of the lawn every other year

We'll have one big dog and a little cat and maybe even a coop of chickens

Maybe even a backyard swing

Maybe even a couple kids that spit watermelon seeds at each other when we're not looking

I want a gallon of belly laughs for breakfast every day. And really delicious apples for dessert

We'll go to work each morning and come home with face-cracked-open smiles, certain that this is what our mothers meant when they said

“go do something that doesn't feel like work”