July 26, 2016

under your knees, a sandbox

Maybe no one is stopping by the house with a basket of fresh blueberries and an hour to sit
in your kitchen with the windows blowing in that particular storybook breeze.
Maybe the neighbors aren't knocking on the porch door and asking for the cup of sugar
their cake needs, and you fall into that beautiful dance that forgets the walls between you.
Maybe the drive to the ocean always involves bad traffic on the Parkway, drivers bristling
in their lanes when someone forgets to signal, and the beach is so pockmarked with bottle caps
and those kelly-green straws from Starbucks, you stay cloistered on your towel, despite
your deep hunger to swim. Sometimes, the acreage of wishful thinking stretches so wide,
while your patch of joy stays shockingly small. And yet, under your knees, a sandbox, a playground
of such tidy proportion, all the rides are just a fingertip away, if you'd only reach out to touch them.