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your left lung is smaller than your right lung

to make room for your heart.

[u.s. dept. of health and human services]

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Flagstaff. Bike tire marks on doors. Banana chocolate chip bread cut with a pocket knife. Scuffed food boxes set up next to hiking boots, everything tight, together, always ready to leave. Six, seven, eight people to a house, sleeping on Thermarests, floors covered in pouches of tobacco, U.S. atlases, backpacking food.

Narrow streets, bright with Christmas lights, bikes weaving in and out of Subaru Foresters, mountain dogs. Boys from Alaska, air shimmering in sift light, prayer flags nailed to a skylight. Pine cones scattered in forest floor backyards, lovelier than Easter eggs, cold mountain air on wooden steps.

I stand next to a tree stump. I put my fingers in the scar. The sun slips behind the mountains like yolk, the air is cold, and I know that I dreamed about this last night, standing here. I feel the things that I love the most move around me, I know that the unknowable is here. It says, This is only the beginning.

Pine trees spearing the sky, my cairns. Pomegranites bleeding like wounds. Women with strong arms. They are different, but like the ones I remember. Their swearing sounds the same as their laughter.