The summer is here; driving home with windows down, labored breathing and hair stuck behind your ears nudges me further out of town, past the foot hills and the mountain walls and to benevolent waves of the relentless sea. Walking is like swimming here; the air hangs thick draped over my arms hiding the sirens and the crying babies and stars.

The nights bring a new kind of joy. The air smells of the honeysuckle and lilacs that stretch just outside my bedroom window, their seductive vines winding and writhing and wrapping without shame with the moon and the stars as winking witnesses. All is without shame on nights like this. We all stand before the sky and God with our arms outstretched and the wind like lovers fingers play in our hair and on our necks.

Tonight I felt small when I was with him. Like a tiny bird or a child lying next to something far more powerful then itself. His are the shoulders that shelter me at night and his are the eyes that see for miles around us, just so that my eyes can look at the flowers growing between the rocks on the highway.

Goodnight.
-A.H.