A Poem

Lying on the roof, gray shingles arranged in a dizzying array of porcupines latched onto my back, we breathed poetry. The words rose from our mouths, shimmering, to join the night stars. They spilled out, hesitant at first, but encouraged by the thrum of the cicadas, latched onto the sticky summer air. Thoughts, inhale: autumn or fireflies, rainbows or Christmas lights, apples or surfing. Memories, exhale: cheap sunglasses lit by the fluorescent panels of CVS aisles, intimate raindrops washing the chocolate milk mustache off my face. Head thrown back in abandon, singing and screaming across a field of green.

We breathed some more. Our fears crystallized, then were gently swept away; our questions dissolved into the wet beads framing our faces. Nonsense crept into our back and forth, rapid fire sentences, but wasn’t nonsense what started this poem in the first place? It had no head or tail, just a long sinewy body that weaved between each statement, each detail, each phrase, before decomposing in the humidity that surrounded us. Our snake-poem kept slithering away into the darkness before I could decipher its knots and undulations. I could barely follow it as it was, without taking note of what it was saying, and so I had to watch it unfurl its wings and drift away on the breeze, and let it go. By some unspoken agreement, we had acknowledged that our poem was this unstoppable and impermanent force that we could admire, even travel with, but couldn’t stop, and we waited, molded in the moment, seeing where it would take us and when it would fizzle out so that every word was bittersweet and once the poem’s last sigh crackled out of existence we couldn’t help but smile.

We did many other flavor filled things that night. Our poem had revitalized me, cleared out a space in my chest and pumped it to the brim with pressurized excitement, and as I scrambled through the bedroom window and back into the house, I felt the need to wildly laugh – to absolutely laugh my head off doing something only a 17 year old on summer break with adrenaline tangled in her hair would do. I ended up with chocolate cake smeared on my face in guise of a battle scar as I rocketed down a deserted Midland Ave on a too-small scooter under the harsh glares of 11 pm lampposts. It felt special and secret, as though the fragments of our poem had settled on my skin to shield me from the usual inhibitions of the night. Nothing could touch me; I navigated the gravel map easily, swerving around bumps and holes on the road with the cool and poise of a professional scooter rider. I was satiated. Amidst the crisp June air that blanketed me like an electric comforter, I felt more awake than usual.

And yet, when I recall that evening, although I smile at the thought of chocolate frosting mishaps and scooter races, our poem is the pang in my chest – a little snake curled around my ribs, pulsing with the rhythm of my exhales