Instructions for Traveling West

Instructions for Traveling West

Remember What It Was Like to Be a Kid?

All skinned knees,
pavement and sick-sweet
candy in the sticky backseat.
How you stank of sweat,
bewilderment, popsicles, peppermint.
Swam in summer until it gobbled
you whole. Witnessed revelation,
trembling and silent: the rabbit’s nest
between the stones, a dark bat winging,
the buck carcass at the edge of the wood
where you weren’t allowed to linger,
and a woman calling you home.
How you found the jewel of language
and marveled at your wealth: mule deer,
blister beetle, blue ghost firefly. Each new name—
a little candle you brandished in the dark.


Long Division

My first friend was built like a willow tree. We were the same age but she was taller and leaner and impossibly graceful. Hadessah is the Hebrew name for Esther—the biblical beauty who saved her people from genocide. I was envious of her name and its heroism. Mine was Joy—flimsy and monosyllabic like pond or soap or cheese. Hadessah was smarter than me too, got better grades, and understood long division where all I saw was a thin bridge with numbers jumping off. But she laughed at everything I said and my god, I adored her. When you’re little, love really knocks you out.

We said what kids say when you move. That we’d write. That we wouldn’t forget. That, every night, we’d look up at that one weird winky star and make a wish. After she left, I could still see her bike leaning against the house, its blue body trembling in the rain.

Nothing is as lonely as childhood, and the person to finally interrupt that ache is a big miracle. You never forget the hero who slides into the bus seat beside you or scoots their tray over at the lunch table. The silhouette of someone small and familiar running down your street—sweaty and hopeful that you can come out to play. To this day, I can still hear Hadessah’s voice at sunset. The bats winging in the dying light. She’s calling out my dumb name. She’s making it sound almost beautiful.