Hundred and One

Sky's dark grey tonight, and it's a memory on a loop, driving west with a boy I used to know on nights like these, acoustic sounds blowing out our windows, my toes curling while he and I swirl together around the world we've captured a hundred times on this same back road under green leaves falling through the moon roof, or the sun roof -- which ever -- and the dashboard's decorated with pieces of our adventure. Teaming tides of east coast night winds win us over and beneath this clearer sky, we vacate city lights, seek a noiseless night where we can engulf ourselves in this hundred-and-first sweep-up of each other, echo our breaths against his and my skin and the freer air we finally find every time we rendez-vous into the nowhere-new-but-unknown-to-you place we've loved for three years. And these times we've taken again and again, as we're stuck together like a sickly sweet love song to a girl's healing heart, pull my rosy cheeks up to my squinting eyes and draw me back to each day that led me to love him. And I'll keep loving him while these trees keep whistling in the cool breezes wrapping around winding dirt paths, and as our torn turquoise quilt keeps us warm on winter-nights-almost-turned-spring, these things leave me breathless in the crook of his arms until he revives me to let him lead me to love.