We rode all afternoon along the barren creek bed
jumping boulders, kicking up dust, clutching the coarse manes.
I wrapped my thin thighs around the bulging sides
and hung on. It didn’t matter there were horse flies,
heat, the itch against our legs, the dry grass full of ticks
and ready to catch fire. We were ten years old and flying
past fields fringed with oak and aspen, held skyward—
the earth, its rough stones and clumps of nettle—
weightless below. For a while, we’d forgot
our spiral notebooks covered in glittered stickers,
the careful shape of words we etched inside,
the sardine can of the yellow bus where boys
elbowed us in the ribs, grazing the small cones of our breasts.
Whatever it was our fathers drank from the bottles
they kept above the sink, whatever our mothers cursed
as they soaked the dirty dishes, straightened the sheets,
we were beyond it now, crashing down into the empty creek,
only to lift back up into the summer air.
We were that light, that far outside the laws of gravity.
Nothing could touch us.