let’s pretend it’s ‘99 & we’re still young, wild & free,
or at least young enough to still believe in wild freedom.
you fill up the tank. i’ll drive. we’ll head west on I-80
for as long as the gasoline allows, find our hearts again
in the endless expanse of broken white lines & black
asphalt. no cell phones, no gps keeping tabs on us in the dark,
just open road & sunsets as far as our eyes can see,
the sweet taste of innocence hanging in the air, organic
like that one time when we mixed baking soda & vinegar
together in the plastic submarine toy i got in church
because i had memorized just enough scripture verses
to pick anything i wanted from the treasure chest mom kept
in the sunday school room we weren’t supposed to know about,
but we did anyway, because secrets don’t last long in small towns
just like this one, & we dropped it in deer creek, watched
the bubbles froth that rust-red water into dirty foam.
it shot forward just like some kind of spooked animal,
a deer with glass-black eyes burning bituminous, tail surrender-
white & pointed straight at the sky, or the cat in the hayloft
fur all bristle & panic, trying to outwit the coyotes
howling their lungs & hunger into the pennsylvania air
while the stars burned incandescent from a time older than god.
we’ve never known safety like we did back then,
before ed turned all your sleep into nightmares,
before the chemicals making up the mood ring inside
my head turned everything black. it was simple then.
it’s gotten much more complicated since – we’re both adults now,
crushed by the weight of complexity, the intricate tangle
that knots yesterday & tomorrow. but i wish we could go back
sometimes, to those golden hours when you & i were still kids,
both innocent & sinless. nothing at our backs but wind.
nothing before us, but hope?
william james (they/them) is a poet, community organizer, & teaching artist currently residing in Keene, NH. They’re the author of rebel hearts & restless ghosts (2016) and if I Forget Thee Lowcountry (2021). Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in South Carolina Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Stirring, the Engine(Idling, Two Cardinals, Westchester Review, & elsewhere.
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