When the sun rises, we'll lock the door, fill the gas tank, squash our book collection into crevices where gum wrappers and coins have fallen from grace and pockets. You will speculate on what might be after this, and then skip right to the moment where you leave the fingerprints of your smile on my skin and hair.

I can't drive your car, but I'm a funny girl; I'll make you laugh, so that you feel it between your fingers, and under your tongue, shimmers through your hair: the kind of laugh that makes you know you're alive.

We'll tell our stories, the ones we've heard before-your grandmother in Budapest, my disenchanting childhood-listen to the textures of the words, let them restore us like hot, strong tea.

I will not tire of you. I do not lose faith, only my sense of direction and the occasional eyelash.

We can only go so far, of course, before we fall off the edge of the world, but in the meantime, we'll stop and stare at things that are strange and beautiful, like each other.

It's important for folks like us to remember the things that keep us tied to this world-running shoes, a Mozart violin concerto, Jerusalem from a rooftop at night.

We'll sleep in the bed of your truck, the spine of the earth holding us up - rising to meet us- eager to be the life and the length of our days.









Chanel Dubofsky is a program director at Oberlin College in Ohio.

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