dear rocky dennis,

i wish we could have been kids together. i hope we would have been friends.

i would have chased you around the blacktop at recess. and i would have let you pull my hair, but i would have pretended not to like it. we would hold hands and skip rope and swing together singing songs from musicals we haven't written yet.

we would share bag lunches in the fenced-in grass at school, and pick wild strawberries from the bushes beneath the dogwoods. and we would climb the chain link fences to fall over on the other side.

i would have dreams later when you moved to another town, of the two of us being young again and on the same schoolyard, happy again as we used to be. and we would be flying with our hands clasped together and extended above us and we could perch on branches of trees, like birds, cooing and happy.

i would learn swedish to know you better. i would change my name to be one of the girls you sing about in your songs.

~~~<3
-stephanie