cold stones stacked tall. dark.
empty. we grew up, they moved
away. now i pass by everyday and
sigh. fleeting in and out of
lives, now only i remain. summer
nights spent in mustard yellow and blue; on couches in the dark willing time to
stop. first loves lost.
the ball court where no ball
could be played for the cracks in the heat and the puddles in the cold. we talked for hours until we were
caught by parents, who had been looking for us for those same hours while we
should have been at home. a simpler
time, before phones on the hip of every seven-year-old, though much harder for
a mother searching for a child. but our parents should have learnt to come first to the place where Tora
once stood. sitting on a tree
stump big enough to fit five.
now the seesaw has not been seen
in years, the playground fort but lost.
but the stones don’t hold our
memories. this time before rent
and responsibilities lives on in the spark in our eyes when we meet again, and
talk about the way the floors creaked as you tried to sneak and how we thought
we knew it all.