No matter how well you prepare yourself for heavy lifting, sometimes your grip will slip. Or you will underestimate your stamina. Or a stair will be three inches shorter than the rest of the flight, and you will stumble unexpectedly - because all stumbles come unexpectedly - and you will lose your balance.

And in that moment you will need to stop. Right away. Because to continue on would be unsafe.

My parents have never told me that there’s no Santa Claus.

And I’ve asked.

A lot.

I started to ask because other kids said that there wasn’t a Santa. That Santa didn’t exist. That not only did our parents create this massive lie, they were actually the perpetrators of the ruse. And they were all, every one of them - co-conspirators. Hot co-conspirators. With mini marshmallows.

In the pause before the push, we ground ourselves. In the pause before the push, we found ourselves. In the pause before the push, we let ourselves stretch, grow, become a whole planet.

Pluto is a planet.

Because when I was a kid

They told me it was and

If the night sky can shift and

Change that much

What else can we lose?

Hello. Hello. Hello.

A greeting that is stale on my tongue.

Hello, fellow human.

Hello.

Nice to greet you again.

Here, I have set the table.

I put a spoon down, there, alongside the plate,

but I don’t know why as we are serving neither soup nor jello.

This summer I discovered I was not homeless but home, more. Home here and there. Home in several states. With many memory keepers. With family that is blood, and family that is chosen. Driving to each of them, connecting myself to my magic, which is tucked in corners of roads all over.