The overflow, the rush, the scream, the loud-heart-kicking, breath on split lips, leaves flying, eyelash detached from the lid, make a wish, clouds bleeding into one another, bright seams between them, childhood laughter echoing in the back of old cherry coke bottles, fingers curled around the glistening rungs of a ladder pointed up and toward the light, wasps whirling with the sparrows, another fifteen inches up and up, heaving higher, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could reach back and grab his hand, but he won’t take it, you’re sure of this, he’s conflagration and epiphany and you’ve resigned yourself to something grotesquely ordinary, magma shooting down a radial vein when he brushes your ankle, hurry up, ascending into the hot blue, face up, chin up, steady now, the crest is coming, the skyline is swarming into view, his breath faster than usual, the two of you stepping into windswept silence and catching your breath as you stand for a moment on the top of the world, watching the glowing vista because you can’t look at him, swallowing saliva that’s flooded your mouth at the thought, eardrums pricking at the movement beside you, the rumble of vocal vibrations: it’s so—beautiful, and yes, it is, turning to him to catch the splinter of light in his mouth, it is.