DANNY I LOVE YOU

DANNY

Danny, I love you. I love that my curls are 

Your curls

Your curls

That they bounce when you run

ECHO 3

You dive under the water

Swim trunks drying on the hot concrete when you sit out for a snack

ECHO 3

A hershey park sweatshirt with the brown so faded it’s no longer chocolate.

But those swim trunks! 

ALL ECHOS But those swim trunks! 

Red and blue with cargo pockets

ECHO 3

 I know you hate the way they cling when they’re wet.

But you wear them anyways. 

DANNY

I’m not sure when I stopped wearing them. I went through 

one pieces

ECHO 3

And eventually, mom’s own hand-me-downs when you could fit into her A cups. But I know you. You’d keep those children’s sized 8 trunks deep in a drawer of your dresser for years and years just to know they were there. 

It can be our little secret.

DANNY

Danny,

I love you

DANNY

I wear my curls longer just for you

ECHO 1

For all of the years you made mom pin them back behind your head in a neat

DANNY 

“Tighter!” 

ECHO 1

You’d cry, her hands never being enough to make the hairs disappear. The brushes, the combs, the smell of strawberry detangler. Snapped hair ties and stray pieces that distracted you from school. From playing with your friends. 

ECHO 3

And you’d leave some strands sticking through the front to look like Max Goof

ALL ECHOS

Another secret we can keep. 

Because we love all of you. 

Even if you can’t, we will. 

DANNY

I will.

I’ll love your gap tooth smile and overbite from sucking your thumb much longer than most kids. 

I’ll love your fear of elevators and fast cars and loud noises.

ECHO 3

and girlhood

and the pieces of each

and the pieces of each

you never got to have.

ECHO 3

How you know what it’s like to bleed through your favorite denim shorts. 

And also remember the feeling of sunshine on your bare chest.

DANNY

Sometimes I still smell it in the air. 

The smell of being 6. 8. 14. 

The changing spring and growing leaves and sweat on the back of my neck. 

The muck at the edge of that lake.

ALL ECHOS

It’s as if we can feel the sand in your sneakers. 

ECHO 3

Or the scrapes on your knees

Or the aching you feel inside of you.

Or the aching you feel inside of you.

ALL ECHOS

And we love you. 

ALL ECHOS

And we love you. 

all of you