The lights always stay the same in a town you remember. The lights stay the same. And you are cradled in their color, forever fifteen years old, standing beneath the great pine tree. Spotlit, falling. You remember how he stood there, bent over at his waist, leaning forward, arms outstretched, swinging an invisible bat past your cheek. How you shouted out something fast and choked, but with a joy you had forgotten: “BALK.” And how the word fell awkwardly from your lips and landed between you on the frozen grass. “Good,” he told you, and you may have bumped your shoulder against his.  Sometimes in the summer the sun never went down, just ached whiter against the dark sky. The river turned glass and silk. The river licked at your knees. And you remember how the canopy of leaves stretched its peaceful fingers over your tangled arms, casting shadow puppets; how in the salted night your salty skin undressed itself easily, arching against the blue velvet couch, whose electric fur held you, knowingly; how you thought, “so this is it, this is it,” and it was. If you could have trapped the driveway in your fist, you would have. Would have wrung it in your hands like a cool sheet on a clothesline. Would have pulled until it followed shyly.