The reservoir as a wishing well

I can assure you, crushed hopes do not die. They sink to the bottom of a great memory lake, festering until the bottom roils during storms, and the lake becomes the kind of pond that people think they made, the kind fit for trashing because nothing beautiful ever lived there anyway. My regret skip easily across the surface, but my hopes lovingly laden with your dreams, sink with little splash. Even though small moments flicker like fireworks, streetlamp confessions, jumping into puddles, they fade while apologizing as our most earnest wishes fall deeper down where hues fall to shades, and shades fall to diary entries that remind me that we knew all too well what could have been.

Sixty thousand feet over

Whenever I fall out of the sky, I smile, knowing I’m coming home. A crash landing into a crash pad of memories where you cry, laugh, and hold me like you know where it’s all headed. Like lovers alive, we put each other first to the point our feet tangle, diving like rain drops through gossamer, with great ease, knowing that the sun will come some time. When I wake up, I think of all the places and foods and grocery stores that we never went to together. But in the ether, we don’t do any of that. We always go for a walk that starts at the arch where I tried to sneak up on you that one day in the fall, and our footprints leave rainbow patterns, and gradually and suddenly we’re pacing above the clouds, moving up instead of moving on, joining the horizon instead of surging towards it. There, we are already where we want to be.