I

A is going around telling
our friends I’m falling in love.

I’m biking across South Dakota
with my baby brother discussing yet again
what love means.

We’re driving through New Hampshire as I say
I too am for freedom
so long as we recognize the stakes in its definition.

Live and let live.
The latter is actually the simpler part.

II

A is going around telling
any ol’ person I’m moving to Spain.

And, of course, I take offense
at the word falling because these aren’t accidents.
These are choices.

Since I was a child, I have loved snakes. Something
in their serpentine nature, their slither
and hiss.

Live and stand up for life.

III

Mostly, perhaps, I liked how their slick
skin felt so cool against my own.

I deny none of it.
But these choices are still in the making.

What if freedom is not only the big sky?

IV

My baby brother isn’t really—
no longer baby, no longer brother—but we’re still family

in the way we were always the kids who ate our carrots first
and asked nothing of the future.

I’m refusing to buy myself new things
because a back corner of the brain knows in one future
I’m leaving and they can’t come with me.

What if freedom is also us—together—beneath the sky, sometimes cold,
always wet?

V

Living has always been the hard part.

A and I aren’t talking
about it, except for that one early summer day
as the sun crests the horizon.

VI

I’m walking alone through the tall grass,
mid-step when my foot catches sight of the coil beneath it

right as the snake shoots to the side
in one perfectly rattling motion.

This is the scary part

when you come face-to-face with what
you already love and find yourself
terrified.

Marisa Lanker Paniello is an agroecological researcher and sometimes poet. She is a lover of plants, humans, words, and the relationships that tie them. She asks questions incessantly.