Let’s meet somewhere outside time and space

after Diane Suess

between Lincoln logs, where love letters are stashed, hidden 

like candy wrappings; where swinging bridges sing a lullaby 

to chipmunks as they slip and slide between blind melons, 

in the thicket of glitter pens budding out of a cup labeled Feminist, where the sun 

sets on a table for lost birthday wishes with extra chairs, inside a glass 

house that catches every rainbow hopscotched bright on window pane, 

where we play with dough on piano keys, in a forest flourishing of trolls

whose hair is as wild as strawberry soda, where Simon Says, in a storefront displaying 

candles with wicks weary of wind, in the shadowed alley full 

of Cabbage Patch Kids and Pound Puppies, in between 

the i and s in the word kiss, between sole and concrete while stepping 

beyond where the sidewalk ends, on an island unspoiled by public view, adrift 

on an ocean of lavender.