Midwestern Morning

by Annabella Dlugi

Do you remember all the fights we had? I barely remember them the next day. There are some that lasted, I suppose.

I remember the burnt orangey brown of the pine needles by the big white pine tree in Mauston, and the feeling of the sandy earth beneath my toes. Those fall sunsets glowing through the trees.

Devouring raspberries and bumbling over acorns, I suppose we were like birds.

Do you believe in time? In magic?

The white jeep’s exhaust and “platform nine and three quarters!” before school.

Early morning lights and the green quilt upstairs.

What endures after?

The canadian geese in the sky in November. Epitome of community.

Everything I know I know from you.

There’s a song by Forrest that goes: Even / After / All this time / The Sun never says / To the Earth / “You owe me” / Look / What happens / With a love like that / It lights the / Whole / Sky.

Love, like the shifting seasons, keeps on.

Annabella Dlugi is a senior at Lawrence University studying English Literature. She loves all things art, especially theatre and music, and is fueled by obscene amounts of coffee, friends, and water walks.