twenty-three

photos by cody-leigh bond

January September wished she was twenty-three again. When she was twenty-three she would let herself collapse into heart. The upturned leaves smiled at her twenty-three year old face. Each and every time she awoke to a new caveat face, she would do one of two things. Wistful hours staring at the patterns made by oaks, or, depending on the season, weeks of slumber until new faces began to dance between the ingenious smoke of sidewalks. The trivial forces which caused the same ascension to crested carved ridges (or allowed her to sleep until late afternoon) all seemed acceptable at twenty-three. Of course there was some grace between the turning of a year, and the change about her didn't occur strictly by temporal conventions. In around a week's time however, the acceptances developed in her twenty-third year were swept clean out of her ears. Swirling ribbons in the July air.