There are these moments. 

Moments that extend into forever, that fill you with warmth and sensation that reminds you how full you can be. 

A sunset that splashes color on a canvas of cloud as music drifts in waves, making pine trees tremble and friends inhale for presence and remembrance. 

A thumb rubs a jagged rock, the child’s feet in trickling snow melt, his broken, tormented insides writhing against love. 

Lovers in a dirty, messy, communal and public world ignore the stains and hold one another, talking absent, thoughts absent, themselves, and all of themselves, present in courage. 

Sparks thrown into the atmosphere roll and whiz past two sets of eyes, joining twinkling stars to observe two friends broken, and broken together. 

A kid, a social creature, whoops with glorious victory as he whips down slick, slanted snow, trees only blurs and his friends leaning and tightening their stomachs, as if they could catch up. 

A father lets a son loose, not in ignorance of paternal responsibility but for it, because he knows that adventure is found where the bear, charred trunks and steaming Earth is. 

Friends for life let laughter rock their bodies and drain their eyes of tears, forgetting whey they were there in the first palace, as a pink sun sets it’s touch on the Bridgers and the river reminds us that life moves on. 

A suffocated soul looks out in darkness at its creation story, nurturing, teaching, scarring, healing and all else placed in a single valley

Bellies pressed to family carpets inch forward to avoid hanging loops of Christmas lights above amid a myriad of atmospheric conditions: scents of peppermint hot chocolate in that Santa mug, and Christmas carols pluck silence from the deepest parts of the house and our chests. 

Gods pull at the corners of my mouth, 

these moments are always.