Our little bodies were guarded,
Sun-warmed and defended
At watch on the boundaries of the blanket on the lawn
Butter-yellow and threadworn cloak of becoming
Right here, an impossibility of clouds
Right here, pulled in by the tide of our wishes
From the tousled heads of dandelions

This one looks like a ship.
This one looks like a dog.
That one looks like a memory—

Our foreheads, pressed together
Sticky and giggling
Dissolved by distance, each
Staring straight into one Cyclops eye,
Making us something fierce enough to survive the oncoming storm
“It’s so much harder to be grown,” the oracle intones
Forgetting the transient powerlessness of being
Children

So many decades—epics—away, I am
Right here

So close 
that if i stretched out a lotus-fuzzed tongue i could take
a fibrous swipe
of this cloud and feel that spun memory dissolve,
briny and petrichor on my breath.

So close that it could rest its misted forehead gently onto mine, 
my unrelenting heat and its ever-distant cool a
rumble 

“I remember this one,” it would say,  a squint at the monster I’ve become, all admiration and no fear, 

“This one looks like thunder.”