I was little when she would park the car school-side

Speaking to me like I understood

Words pouring out questioning trills and ideology

Explaining that carelessness robs parents

Of telling children bedtime stories…

Her butterfly kisses in my hair

Us two petites overfill these hearts so many think lonely

When they stretch sixty thousand miles

She would park school-side

Speaking abstract ideas through my ears

Wind chimes amidst the blaring silence

Tell me slow and easy

Of honk-horn traffic or the sidewalks

Trailing across her skin

Scenic routes line her face better than smooth freeways

They try drowning her loudest whisper

Failing as epically as her flourishing graciousness

She parks school-side

Lakes of wisdom in her cheeks

Fingers soaring piano keys into afternoon clouds

Reading skyline staff paper

Her sweetheart shoes dancing weeks out of their business

She keeps time like wishes in a tree:

Seen and playfully out of hand

Swaying wafts of jasmine words

Sweeping rustles of fall-leaf phrases

“Life that does not purposefully choose growing joy,

Is surely not living”

Dusk parks me school-side

Dawning blue, half-sleepy rays like blankets

Her morning whispers like distant echoes

Of a trailing friendship

Trading words for moments

Moments to be and not do

I will keep parking the car school-side,

Remembering these whisper-chants overflowing my ears

Pooling in my eyes

And out into my world