I’m not exactly sure how it happens, I’m just sure that it does. One minute it’s a May evening, the green leaves are dancing above me, teasing me with the sky’s blue and white secrets. The river turns over and over, heading to wherever it’s going. The breeze perfumes the air with the smell of lilac, fresh cut grass and that earth smell of wet, humid soil. That dark soil from the bottom of the river, that after deep winter sleeps and deep winter thaws, shipwrecks and vacations amongst grassy spots. Dark soil that shades your feet and leaves lines in your bathtub. It’s 75 degrees. It’s 75 degrees in May and then at the drop of an eyelid, it’s -14 and snow is stacked as high as you can see. The wind cuts through me and an unfamiliar river is frozen over, tricking me into thinking it’s just more solid land, tricking me into thinking life can stay one way for ever. It’s January the 24th and I’m watching them drive you away in a long white car that I never want to see again. Well, unless that white car drives you back saying this has all been a terrible, terrible mistake. A bad joke, if you will. That white car though, it drove straight until I couldn’t see it any more and then I don’t know if it turned left twice and right three times, I just know that it never drove you back to me.

I close my eyes a little tighter. And it’s May again, only it’s May, three years ago and I feel your hands in my curls and my head rests in your lap and I see your dirty feet marked by dark soil and there isn’t anything around for miles that I’d rather start at. It’s just you, me and those dirty feet. You whisper that I was your greatest birthday gift to date. My birthday is months away, but I think seeing your face would be a grand gift too, but how do you go about putting a “you” on a birthday wish list? I push that December birthday out of my mind. I’m not thinking about tomorrows. That May there were only today’s and there sure weren’t enough of them.

By the river I sit. I keep my eyes closed as tight as I can. It’s the best form of time travel I’ve found to date. And sometimes, I accidentally find myself flipping through those May days. Today being one of those. I held on as long as I could, but the sunlight found away to break through and I had to open my eyes to this May day three years down the road where I sit in a swing by the river staring so hard down into my own eyelashes that I could watch the light refract through them. I can’t bear to look up and not for a long time anyway, because the sky’s going to still be teasing me behind the leaves and the water’s still going to be running home and you aren’t going to be standing right there. I see you more with my eyes closed.