Sweaty, sun drenched skin and

sunscreen scented, salty hair -

Red eyes raw from rubbing,

The ocean is deceiving,

in its clarity;

This moment: we are beautiful, invincible.

We are summer.

Perfect people

Plagued by perfect problems,

Perfecting apathetic acts,

Agonizing, artfully:

Soliloquies of starving souls,

Lilting libraries less than full -

Perfect problems

Protect a person’s precious

Pretense of humanity. 

Faces blur and

foggy eyes

are a forecast

too well known,

when standing

here surrounded

by the people

I call home.

From you I’ve

learned so much

more than I ever did

in school,

and here, campfires

and poetry

became the newest

“cool”.

Together we walked

hand in hand,

and so together too

we fell -

rebuilt each other

piece by piece,

shook off the dust

of deeper wells.

I would tell you

that I’m grateful,

I would say

thank you if I

thought

that those words

could ever come

to know

this feeling of

distraught -

but in my time with

you and you with me,

I’ve learned

an awful lot

about how to say

goodbye,

and I now know it

to be tough.

And I can tell you with

all certainty, that

words are not enough.