I squeeze my arms around my arms as tight as I can, ‘I love you. I love you. I love you.’

            ‘I can’t fix this!’ I weep.

            ‘Shhh. Baby, listen. I love you. I love you. I love you.’

            I fall asleep in this shit that I woke up thinking I couldn’t sleep another night it. All last night I walked. I walked to the edge of the ocean, past the rose bush with your name on it, through the pews of the catholic cathedral by the bay, to the bench, through the hills that split Florida, into the canyon by your grave, up Dove St. Up up up, babyboy look up. Every star in sky burns for your next step. There’s nothing to fix and no one to save. Thank your lucky sun hands that they lived to press against her fire for just a moment. Let them burn. Let the blue veins pop in your fragile pale wrists and shoot up to your beating heart. Remember. Sing. Breathe a rhythm so powerful that the beat never stops. Ba de da da, boom! Smack dab into a dream fueled by every tree you touched today. You can roll around and cry if you need to baby. You can paralyze yourself mid-scream. You can need. You can beg. You can hope for a picture to take itself. You can remember the future; all you need to do is be still. Don’t fix something fucked up, see something better. Feel pain. Then splash it on a blank canvas any way you like. Like cold roaring water into a Cliffside. 

            I wake up on a train. Three stops ahead, P walks on. Her eyes fumble over all the empty burgundy seats. She picks the one next to me and plops down. She lays her head on my shoulder and grabs my hand, spreads my fingers and slides hers between, shoves them all between my knees. 

            ‘Hold us together, okay?’ She starts crying. She can’t make sense of anything and she thinks this means she’s lost her mind. ‘When we meet again, why are we so afraid? Why do I run away? Why are you so scared to let me in? Why do we work and teach and learn about nonsense! Shit! Its all shit! Why do we forget love? How do I forget you? Look at me Sage! You have to explain this to me. Quickly, mum says we get off in three stops. Mum says America will be great. Mum says people are free there. Mum says it’s a democracy. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds like a bigger word than is necessary. If you were free, wouldn’t you just feel it? Sage. Please. Say something. 

            ‘I love you. I love you. I love you.’

            ‘No! More! I need answers. I need to remember. I think something terrible is going to happen.’

            ‘My love, you will find me. My desk will roll right into yours. My heart will beat a million miles an hour and my love will spill all over your homework and to do lists. I’ll fuck up your ability to think straight. You’ll know it’s me. It’ll be an undeniable ache.’

            ‘But the fear, it will stop me. What are all so afraid of?’

            ‘Memory. If we remember, we know, love must always return home. That is scary thing to remember. No one wants to be alone. No one wants to be so scared all the time.’

            ‘I don’t want to leave!’ She screams and grips my tiny bicep with all her 9-year-old might. ‘No! You can’t make me! I like it right here. This train is all I’ll ever need. Burgundy is a fine color. We’ll stop for cheese when we need to eat. We could probably even raise a few chickens on the last cart. Yes! Lets make a home here. We don’t have to leave Sage! We don’t have to wait, just to loose each other again. No! I’m tired of waiting! I’m tired of living without you by my side! I want you! The rest can go to hell! Let them burn! Let them sink!’ 

She’s staring into my boyish face, giant baby blue eyes, beaming waiting.  I’m laughing, I’m crying. I’m strategizing and stargazing. ‘Portia. Lets go. We’re home.’ Her mum grabs her wrist and starts pulling. ‘What did I tell you about sitting next to wild boys! They only want one thing. He’s a brute. I can tell just by looking past his gaze. Lets go. We’re home.’

            ‘No!’ P screams. ‘Let me go! No! Sage! Tell her to free me! I wont go! I wont be free there! It’s a hoax. It’s a bunch of rats in a rat race. It’s a bunch of girls on a beach that forgot how to eat. It’s a bunch of kids on the streets starving. It’s a warzone. Its plastic chips, fake currency! It’s a ticking time bomb. Tick tick tick, boom, you’ve lost time again. Mum, it’s all just pretend! Please believe me! I want to stay. I can’t leave him! Not again.’ Her mum puts her hand over P’s little mouth and picks her up off the seat. P’s limp now, she’s fallen asleep admits all the commotion she made. She’d been traveling for a long time; it wasn’t her fault. 

            I try with all my 11-year-old strength to chase her, make her wake up! Teach her how to remember dreams. But I’m weighted by lifetimes of space in-between. This isn’t my stop. I have to keep riding.

            ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I whisper after her, ‘not one single bit of it. You loved with your whole heart and your whole soul tried to jump into my guts, I know. I felt it the whole time. But that world was so full of fear, it dripped over your aged eyes like black tar and it held you in that place. I couldn’t stay. You forgot what I looked like. But I never let go. I never stopped dreaming of home. I knew. When I looked into you, my own love shot back out into my gaze. I thanked you for life. I knew it was you. You knew it was you too. Don’t be scared, be still, be patient, breathe, you’ve known your whole story all along. You will come for you.’