Maple Trees

I want to be a little girl again.

I know that sounds silly.

I don't care.

I'm 23 years old, will I never grow up?

Sometimes I wonder at me, I'm going to be getting married soon and I still like to take my shoes off and roll up my jeans and play in the creek. I can't keep still in the grocery store and I firmly believe that green grassy hills were made to be rolled down. Maybe I am just a little girl after all, playing at being grown up.

I want to be eat ice cream and cross my ankles and swing my feet from up in a tree. Standing on the ground looking up thinking about where I am now and how I want to be higher. I jump and grab hold of the lowest branch and then pull myself up and wrap around it hanging upside down like the stereotypical pictures of sloths. Then a quick spin and I'm there. Perched on the branch and thoroughly pleased with myself. I can go anywhere from there. I prop myself up in the branches and contemplate the shape of the leaves. How when I step just so the branch moves and it looks like an owl in flight, I can hold onto the trunk with one hand and poke my foot out as far as it will go and push the branch up and down and watch the wings move. In the winter it's sad because the leaves have fallen and the owl is just an unrecognizable array of twigs and branches.

Somebody beautiful once said "I like to perch."

I think he is brilliant.