Some Simple Steps to Maintaining Your Youth

Start where you are and pluck the fruits of your world:

a pencil, a paper napkin, and a tube of chapstick.

Your pencil is your sword.

Slash across the paper napkin and step through the jagged, fluttery edges.

Make sure you turn around and stick those edges together with the chapstick.

Now draw a line along your flimsy brown ground

until you come upon a house you drew when you were five.

Wiggly, semi-square walls, triangular roof,

exactly two windows with exactly four windowpanes,

and a rectangular front door with a circle doorknob.

Reach out your hand.

Bills, ramen noodle nights, and not enough sleep split your skin apart

until your hands are chapped and raw.

Pluck an apple from the tree next to the house.

The juices are sweet like summer days and sticky like kindergarten.

Pour the juices into the cracks on your hands.

Eventually they will scar over,

and you can pick off a scab the shape of your first crush.

Let it flutter to the spiky brown grass

where the bulbous bumblebees that hum around your head

will softly nibble on it and make it into a bittersweet honey.

Now take your pencil and draw a hammock between the two broccoli apples trees.

You can nap for a while until the insurance company calls,

splashing responsibility across your paper napkin world

until it is crumpled and soggy.

Pay the bill and go to work so you can afford to pay the bill.

But make sure to get take out for dinner every once in a while

so you always have a nice stack of paper napkins.

Harley Smith lives in North Dakota with her husband, baby daughter, and parakeet. You can often find her either working in her garden or writing up a storm. Either way, something grows.