anachronistic heart

There is a girl in the Valley who grew up from the ground. I never knew her until now, but from what I felt, I could have guessed that her hair was scented with the orange groves she grew up on. Like nights spent building fires unsupervised on front lawns. Her hands smelled like dirt in the way it’s only understood by children, and they pointed straight up at the sky. Unmarred by industry or coldness of heart, the plain stretched uninterrupted, and in every direction, it came to meet the sky. We spoke for the first time; I asked if the stars could be mine. She didn’t speak, only looked into my childhood.

She smiled and pointed up.

She hadn’t given me the sky, she had simply introduced us.
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There were reasons I never knew the sky. Mostly because in the depths of my own concrete jungle, she and I never chanced upon each other during any of the lives I had spent sprawled across asphalt greens.

But there were signs.
When I was 7 I raced the boys across the playground lined with wrought iron, blooming from the concrete, pointing to something that appeared to be hidden behind the silhouetted buildings. But it was above our heads. Sirens spinning crimson and the steadily frantic cadence of car alarms formed the susurrations that lulled me to sleep each night. They hinted at something more. Because everything where I’m from is jaded, even the sounds know they’ll dissolve into the wind.