when you're around

you're beautiful, of course you are, but i don't care about that right now. no, what i care about is your smile, your creeping smile that invades my face even as it invades yours, taking over and satisfying, tickling the inside of me and pushing me toward you like the ocean and the moon. or like, a slippery foot and a banana peel.

either way, it's amazing and it's worth replaying over and over and over again, through sleepless nights and sleeping days, sleeping bags and campfire, sand dunes and satisfaction, seeing myself with you more tomorrows than i can count, falling apart and together so many times that no one knows who is who any more. i see us, girl, trying and trying and trying and trying, never winning but always grinning, never mad but always sad, trying for more

and getting it, wondering where we are going, then remembering to look out the window and seeing it all, out the windshield and the side window and the back, seeing it all and remembering, what this was all for and who we all are, now at that place inside again, where we once were when we were both teenagers so long ago, only we still are now, when we are alone and the sun is shining, running through the terminals and bus stations and wondering if that mexican really is watching and not even caring

daring to breathe, daring to be free even as others around are not, they're dropping off like flies, and we're flying too, but higher and higher now, this ache inside we'll ignore because it doesn't exist when you're around, and i feel free and i am all i can be and will be and want to be
when you're around