That's when you'll find me alone with my will, my wine, and these scars that show.

The soft flesh of the top of my palm, where my fingers join my hand, are tender to the touch, to pressure. The beginnings of blisters, of future callouses, already from hours holding the rake, the shovel, and the bike handlebars. My hands are small and tender, dainty even, which works well for reaching inside of others in gentle ways. But I also crave large rough hands, toughened by dirt and grips and buliding. These are the hands of autumn, of long evenings getting shorter and bagging the leaves that stand in piles higher than my waist, even as a teenager. But it is not fall, it is spring.

Spring means bright juicy green stalks of crocuses and daffodils poking up in the midst of ashen dirt and dried leaves that sat through the winter. But to me spring is really forsythia, the first blooms of the season, sometimes appearing late in February in the south if the winter is mild. Forsythia, the long wood stems with tiny flowers like bits of crumpled yellow tissue glued to construction paper. The yellow blooms in the backyard, the lone primary color in a sea of shades of brown of our backyard and I watch it from the bathroom window, both of them, the main one downstairs and the one by my bedroom I shared with my brother until he goes away.

As the air finally gets warmer it holds more moisture, and when night falls it cools and I breathe into my lungs desperately, trying to drink the moisture into my body outside of my throat, to hold the scent inside my chest and mouth. The smell of every warm spring and summer melded together (as they tend to do in the south but also here in my memory) and when I am alone and inhale, I think of you. I wonder if you think of me. If you will ever try to find me and if I will want to be found.