will grow will green

Where bodies of water are interrupted by rude stretches of black, asphalt heated and uncomfortable beneath bare heels, where yellow pinstriping leads the way through landscapes that now grow around impeding pathways is where I will wait.

You will drive in a plastic-metal machine, with a silvery sheen on the outside but on the inside, you have plastered wilderness to the walls. Sandstone-beige leather on the dash, the doors. You will anchor yourself to the seat.

I will be walking barefoot, in a flowered dress when I can't find any blossoms to bunch, to toss, to place tender into your hand. There were white and yellow daisies lining the highway but I'm on a graveled shore, wishing for sand, small pink toes wincing with each step.

There will be mountains. They will hang over our heads, not perfect hills of sand drizzled with care from a giant fist but spiraled, etched with a delicate winding road that roars, that complains with every prod from beneath that results in a blemish, or pothole. Tree roots create mounds and ruts, but we won't see them from the lakeside, only the way that oil makes rainbows on the shoulder.

The mountains will seem to lean in, gaze at meshing fingers, and hope to overhear some whispered words, artificially sweet and too cool for spring. With snow on the ground still, our words must be warm.

What will be important is not the mountains, the rainbows or roads, but the lap of water on un-smooth stones, not yet tumbled in the machine I got for Christmas years ago, the creak of a turtle's joints as it wakes at the bottom of the lake, the nuances of green in the tree reflected in my eyes. Green. I grow. You are a tree, and I wrap my arms around your waist. I climb, and I twine.