In the heat of a sun too seldom felt
Elspeth Wilson
Close your eyes and think of a time where you felt happy
—an invitation with no expectation of RSVP
to get away from this place. In the mind,
a time where I was exactly like other girls
flanked by two artworks of emotion and potential
to dance in the pattern of sprinklers and laugh
with the joy of the unobserved
to try to fit into each others’ bikinis and lose all our air in laughter and tightness
to eat cherries and spit the stones at
each others’ breasts
to catch something fleeting
on the beat of a sun setting, heat draining
away from burnt legs like stones
weighing us down, bringing us back
as the evening cooled and the oozing shadows meant
it was time to cloak ourselves again.
