We’re walking thought the woods so we won’t
pollute the air just because we need frosting.
Your face is dappled as you smile at the biker who tumbles past us
you say, “I see him all the time”
looking wistful which is the opposite of
how we’ll all look at the cake later
and we tease you
and I say
“he obviously doesn’t see you since he almost ran you down”
and that just makes us all laugh harder

and this harder is more than what ‘Sixteen Candles’ can do for us
on any afternoon
and it is more invigorating, we thought, than
how it would feel winning tickets to see our second-favorite British band
when they finally realized our city exists so that
we can see them once before high school tries to
make us laugh less than in the woods
when high school starts in only three weeks and
you don’t get a cake for that
but you will maybe have a laugh in
honor of it when you know that you should
cry
because I won’t see you on the weekdays anymore.

I almost fall into a tree, then,
and we plan crossing the street like
it’s some sort of secret mission
and then take three free samples, each,
and buy the frosting
(the sort with sprinkles because that’s gross)
and decide how to go about winning the tickets
(and we obviously planned well since I won just yesterday)
and there are pauses in the laughter
on the way back through the woods when
I think that I might cry.
and we talk about our dreams until
twelve-year-olds on bikes take over the road in front of us,
effectively snapping our smart topics in two.
I wish that on the first day of school I could
punch you on the arm like I did then
so I wouldn’t have to come up with
better thing to do than
listen to the radio, since that will
never take away from my homework

like you always did.

Did this for writing camp after we read "Having A Coke With You" by Frank O'Hara.