I’m sitting here ankle deep in the brown blues of this creek,

hoping the slim oak board bridge we made doesn’t break.

Yoda is completely absorbed by the colors in the water

near the gray rocks a few yards ahead of me. His chocolate fur

always seems clean even after his usual afternoon dirt bath.

My mom told us to stay up on my yard away from the evergreens

where our small bodies always get lost in this forest between

our houses. The green of the trees touching the grays in the sky

and I hope you snuck out the back window

climbing over trash cans and those scratchy bushes.

The afternoon settles into night and I finally see your flashlight

through thick branches and can almost spot your orange Converses. You rush

and dip your feet in, bringing bug spray and pizza pockets,

and we pop out the tape-deck with my homemade radio recordings.

Next year we’ll be able to drive and our late nights will extend

to Taco Bell runs and Evanescence on a car stereo

instead of these shared headphones. Yoda’s shaggy mane

is tough and gnarled with mud and I soak up the earth and sounds and you

my best friend Amber, not hearing the rumble of my mother’s voice

beneath the sudden hard dropping of rain

Dorina Pena graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with her B.A. in English Writing: Poetry in 2008. She got her M.F.A at Carlow University in Creative Writing Poetry in 2011. She has a chapbook published titled Family Tree by Monkeyman Press and she has individual poems published in Voices in the Attic anthologies and the Pittsburgh City Paper, as well as the journal Girls with Glasses. She is currently sending out her full length manuscript Masking White and her second chapbook Black History. She resides in Philadelphia, PA with her husband.