Hill Song

I saw a hill for the first time. It was green. Green, big, forever, open. We walked over it again and again and again. Green, big, forever. I held the moon in my eye, held an old wiry dog in my lap. I held the night on my tongue until it was morning. Somewhere, there is a bitch holding her pup, holding the robin’s egg agile, afraid of her own teeth.

At night, I grind my teeth down to the gum. In the morning, I wait for them to regrow. They do. Bones are like that — disappearing, reappearing, holding, breaking, grating. Knowing, remembering. I wonder if the hill would regrow if I ground it down too, if it would rise back out of the earth, if it would know when to stop, if it would remember, if it would become a mountain instead. There were other hills, but none like this. San Anselmo, Massachusetts, Ohio, Big One, crooked one, the one that looked like a pregnant woman sleeping.

I had a dream where a girl and a dog held the moon in their eyes. I ground my teeth down to the gum. I asked the hill to retell the story. I dreamt it again the next night, Thank You Hill, big forever open hill.

Open mouth, drooling a puddle,

proof of sleep, in the grass.

Open legs, spilling plum colored juice in the space in between,

proof of life (of myself).

I got drunk and saw three shooting stars. You saw them too, and that’s how I knew I wasn’t lying, that they were as real as the hill, as the grass blanketing us, as the night sitting gentle on my tongue. I believe in hills, in robin’s eggs, in bone memory, in dogs and girls who live on the moon and send shooting stars out just for us to gawk at. I bite down on blades of grass until they cut lines in my mouth,

big, forever, open,

draw juice, muscle, metal taste.