you liked the color chartreuse

really, you liked the word chartreuse—it sounded to you like something gutsy and belonging in fairy-tale dreams that birthed speaking frogs and mushroom streams and villains you could smile to, not the buckram collecting dust on its small embossment. you liked the way your stories spun straight from the tongue carried some elegant cadence of their own—unwieldy when told from the backseat but lacking in a way that was coltish and perfect. you liked the way cars on the road late at night sounded as they drove by your window—you liked that there was someone else awake with you.

there’s a picture face down on your desk. and in it you’re flying, next to the birds. they’re seagulls, and you’re all headed toward the ocean. someone might have told you. they could’ve told you the water’s no place for a bird that hasn’t yet learned to swim, but the water found you in other ways, and you were out on the sidewalk when the first drop fell, your chartreuse umbrella a rain saucer, your eyes reflecting diamonds that hadn’t been born yet.

and even now that it’s a bird’s eye view of things, you can’t remember how it used to feel, the soaring.