Toni Partington is a poet, editor, collage artist, life/career coach, and grant writer. Her new book, Wind Wing, a collection of poems dedicated to the women who transformed her life, will be available for $10. Toni’s poetry has appeared in the NW Women’s Journal, Selected Poems of the River Poets’ Society, The Cascade Journal, VoiceCatcher (editions 3 and 4), OutwardLink.net and others. She is the author of a poetry chapbook, Jesus Is A Gas (2009). She serves as an associate editor on the collective of VoiceCatcher, an annual Pacific Northwest anthology of women writers. Toni is a regular columnist for Writing The Life Poetic, an online Zine that complements the print version of the book by Sage Cohen, http://writingthelifepoetic.typepad.com. Wind Wing Sweet breeze scented with orange blossoms in early summer caress my face pressed against the open wind-wing in her Impala. These rides; a secret time to talk while we forget she is crazy – top down, headed home with drippy cones her, strawberry me, maple nut. Just enough time to adjust the wind-wing while the red leather seats grow warm she lets me push buttons to find the right song for our sing-along. These are the times I remember now in melancholy middle age – her hair cut short, dyed blonde shoulders tanned above the halter-top while shorts sprout bare legs down to bright red toenails. I picture this as her departure from upstate New York and Catholic School rules when California set her free and took her down. I watched her ricochet between two worlds – safe home or padded room delicacies or dry-mouthed delirium green lawns or barred doors Sunday Mass or shock treatments her sanity – barely or not at all. I long for the Impala it is easier than longing for her – a drive along Victoria Avenue lined with orange groves and old songs while we drift between dark nights and darker days. Her life, like the wind-wing unlatched slowly, one inch at a time till the wind arrives at high pitch. Throw it wide open and watch everything fly away.