hide or seek

when we played hide and seek as children,
it felt always humid like summer,
breathless like a crash
from a blue-brown ocean wave.
tucking myself under mattresses,
I would wait for the joy of watching your swimming pool eyes
skim past shadows that held me, again and again
til’ once, with the risk of becoming
a pillar of salt, you looked back
and saw me, shrieked
with glee at your final victory.

my turn to seek:
one hundred seconds of silence
and I am the most dangerous girl in the world.
yet a chance look out the window
finds you disobeying the rules
racing through sunlit green-brown grass
(in need of a cut almost as much as your yellow hair).
there, you are an unwieldy gazelle
tripping over swingsets, tree roots, anthills.

you were not stealthy
our mother heard the door slam
as you ran outside to enact your grand plan
of backyard hiding places.
I do not even try to catch you
but shout my surrender
into the thick July air.

minutes later, you walk in, wild-eyed and smiling wide
bringing with you the scent of an afternoon thunderstorm.
you say, “hide or seek?”