Damp summer night hugs the two of us,

Wraps us with adventure:

Warm with a sense of novelty

Which shines in her eyes,

Hazel, glinting in the moonlight,

Locked with mine one moment,

Then closed as she spins and laughs in circles,

Whipping me with her hair

Shining auburn in golden twinkle lights,

Glued to her skinny arms wet with sweat.

She’s so beautiful,

So vibrant under starlight-

 

But her big bright smile,

Her gleeful giggle, our joyful dancing,

Can’t charm my eyes from

Bones poking under ivory skin;

Can’t steal my thoughts from

The way her dress

Hangs on lanky limbs.

My hands around her waist

Search for anything to hold,

But my fingers grip the

Sharpness of her ribs,

Wrapped in paper skin.

 

All the words I might’ve said

To draw her back from the dusky depths

That she was drowning in

Were lost up in the twinkle stars,

Thrown up from our spinning dance.

So the words I said, strangled by

The summer air and sweet emotion

Were I love you,

Whispered in her hair.

 

As waves rush in just to disappear,

She vanished to the darkened shore.

Where every word I could have said

Drug me down to drown me,

haunt me in her memory -

So beautiful,

a fragile wire frame,

frantic in a wild current,

and me, just watching from the shore.