We met in the dark of a theater, kissed with green fluorescence. Your mom told me I looked pretty when I passed her in the wet June heat outside the door. My hand fluttered like a caged bird, tied hopelessly to the wrist bone. It lay uncomfortably on this polyester seat. There you were, brown-eyed and half invisible. I remember how my head fit the hollow of your shoulder. You smelled like Saturday and I was safe.
We grew up in a raincloud of summer. Bare feet against the pavement were our only line of defense against the cruelty of fleeting Junes. Duck ponds and dream-catchers and everything else breathed with life. We weaved through the lines at theme parks and screamed with relief, screamed with conquest at the top of the steel peaks. You made me a bracelet out of guitar string, and I wore it like it played a real song. That’s because it did. I listened to its whirring harmony and I was safe.
We closed away the dancing summer days as the air began to bite. Yet our chests were full of fortuitous mirth bleached out in the sun. It was warm then, but Christmas was warmer. We filled our bones with electricity and spilled hot chocolate through to the toes. Little light holes in the night sky took the place of falling snow against a canvas of black. Happy six, happy twelve, happy eighteen...We lost track. Time was a matter of memories. You kissed my sleeping hand and I was safe.
Years go by, Junes and Saturdays, rollercoaster rides and Christmas lights. We dance on a ship, the only light left on in the harbor. Childhood is ending and forever rolls across your tongue again. The words twist out like cicadas on the sidewalk. I want so badly to make it true when everyone is telling me no. Here we are, the potter’s masterpiece, just waiting to shatter to the earth - something so perfect, forcibly torn apart. The little pieces twinkle with happy goodbyes while I scream with agony for this unfair reality. I won’t let this slip into the salty air, crushed by roaring surf. This is our dream, and I will fight for it across oceans and cling to it through telephone wires. I will grasp the bough as it goes under, and only when we hold waterlogged hands, all other voices lulled by the rush of waves, our harmony forever secured, will I once again be safe.