And on the afternoon it rained, we crowded
into the craft cabin to weave shallow baskets
for our grief—only seven days, and one of them
wet. Funk of beach towels sour
to the stitches, hot blacktop steaming sulfur,
windows fogged white enough to write on
with our fingertips—cartoon hearts
and smudged initials, R + E, T -n- J 4-eva,
the lake thrashing behind our tracings,
cavitated with rain. On the shelves, forgotten
tubs of acrylic paint separated like small bodies
of water, bright sediment under a blear
of polymer. We made bracelets from embroidery thread,
knotting them onto each other’s wrists, best
friends forever, although in truth it was
only a week, the days deliciously long, extending
past dusk and into actual night, cricket song
giving way to the hum and slap of mosquitoes
as we circled around the campfire, faces
whetted and planed by the shifting light
until we could’ve been anyone. That week,
that fire, that place where I tried to lose myself
again and again, and failed, my finger on the window
scribbling only, inevitably, I was here.