If I count backward from 48 to 7, I’ll find a child hiding. She’s grinning. Her glasses take up half her face. She wears pink corduroy pants and a key around her neck and the sun shines on her bowl cut and she leans against a tree and holds a dandelion. I see her on her knees, plucking, trying to find a four-leaf clover for good luck. I see her searching for earthworms, mesmerized, their segmented moist bodies wriggling and sliding. She picks up a furry caterpillar and lets it crawl up her arm. I see her touch a tiny green worm, watch it inching along her finger. I see her rub a dandelion’s yellow under her chin, against her wrist. She blows wishes. There’s a Polaroid flash. I see her split open the milky latex stems and chain them together to make a crown, a necklace.

I see her spin maple keys, toss the tiny helicopters in the air so they whir to the ground. I see her digging a hole to China. I see her hands cup a grasshopper. I see her sweep with pine needle brooms. Can you smell the lilacs, purple and white? I see the rhododendrons bursting with magenta. I hear the bees, fat with buzzing. Blood-red roses drip from the house. I hear the rusty squeak of a broken rocking horse. Spring green pollen and white petals coat every surface. I hear an ice cream truck ringing around the corner. Children are shouting. The seasons bleed into one another.

Time bends. Time does not wait but it does come back around. It flows, it returns, it slows, it floods. It is a jump rope continuously skipping. Turning, turning, turning: you can jump in or out at any moment as long as you can find the rhythm.