Write it all

Sleuthing like Sherlock’s inquisitive daughter, I write it all, every moment captured on paper, scribbled in script even I can barely decipher, the secrets of second grade noted on lined paper I shelve with my illustrated stories of bunnies plunging into the pages of fantasy like Indiana. The pink eraser, avid reader, playground wars and campaigns, recorded like prescriptions in my doctor’s scrawl. I was too busy living in the white pages to chase the victors or underdogs, but they run still a decade later, chasing the spiral binding like the cycles of the moon. And even when the notebook is crammed to bursting and I’ve grown out of elementary school and snuck into a town a state or two away, my mind still writes it all—the kid who mocked my sneakers and laughed at the dragons that burned like stars in the foreground of my drawings. He frowned at the spread wings and clever claws, but still found a way to my seat on the bus, looking triumphantly miserable, and even then, I wrote it all—

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Anywhere but here

I would imagine, skip town and catch an imagination box like an avid hitchhiker—literally anywhere but here will do. I put Patrick’s antics to shame. Have you ever pulled your spaceship into the school parking lot, the rest of the armada laid out over the recess lawn like a picnic spread? My dreams were populated with fleets of flying tin cans, flame roaring like Harleys, metal shined like newly minted coin. You, yes you, ma’am, come aboard. Climb aboard the helicopter, stick your head out the window of the train, prepare yourself for gravity’s vacation. Any vehicle to whisk us away to better places far from this concrete jungle other kids haunt. How many times will I traverse the globe, how many other planets will I gawk at before I win your attention? Even without your runaway hair and batting eyes, the world and her backyard call to me—