(berkeley) Treehouse

We lived in a treehouse

when I was in college

Me and Ava would would sit around our wooden kitchen island, with the only light being the candle in between us

that we lit with an orange Bic covered in glued-on googly eyes and rainbow gemstones

that we lit the joint with last night on the terrace and that will disappear in a few days because they always do 

and the distant glimmer of the Bay Bridge if you looked for it in the window

like a tiny constellation hanging in the black sky just above the water, sparkling white and blinking in and out of sight

We drink wine in silly little glasses that seem to be for parfaits

I pretend I’m starting to like the taste

I think she might like it already

I’m in college yet my instinct is to write about it like a historical era I’m studying from the side

to romanticize my life, every corner of my wooden cabin home and its doorknobs that do not turn

imprisoning Valentina and I in our lockless room for minutes at a time

when we’re running late to class or about to miss our Uber to the city

taking too long to draw the liner on my pink lips and around her blue eyes

I slip in and out of past and present tense because I can’t tell what is behind me and to the future I feel subservient

yet I’m living in a blindspot, between floors and thick wood, a mezzanine of the now

It’s all ending soon and nostalgia creeps up even when I kneel down on my treehouse living room floor

2 am

with my hands in my lap, quietly pleading her not to

asking her to go away for a bit, come back maybe when she’d be less predictable

a bit more impromptu