Category: 2017-18 Submissions

I sit in a graveyard of memories disguised as a deserted playground
And watch the small field of grass, all patchy green-and-gold,
The blades sway in the late-night wind like lovers dancing to a slow song
And somehow I am nostalgic for my own life,
For days that I can never relive,
The ones I spent running beneath this very same moon;
Somehow it’s a different moon now
With a colder light, and harsher edges.
Beneath me are white pebbles that my smaller hands once sifted through
Searching for something alongside her hands,
Pale and dotted with orange freckles.
It mattered that much, when our hands were that small.
Above me is the sky; it seems as though someone
Has forgotten to tell the stars to come out so
I can only see a streetlamp
And the faint light of the moon.
It creaks loudly when one swings; it interrupts the serenity of the night.
She never cared about that, I remember.
She’d join me and my swing would croak like a tired old man
And hers would wheeze in high-pitched protest, and we’d become
A swingset symphony of two.
I walk to the swings in a trance;
As years wear on, memories fade like a picture taken long agai.
Not tonight, though.
Tonight, the strange combination of moonlight and memory
Create technicolor shadows that dance across the ground;
Shades of pink and blue I’ve never seen before.
Or maybe I have, when the picture was still vibrant with color.
So I sit.
I remember how to work my legs, up and down, up and down,
Old memories running into new ones
like the colors of the shadows as they intersect.
And I fly, and the swing creaks–
A swingset symphony of one.

Fulmore

8th

Do you remember those days?
Because I do
When we wore those cheap knockoff Converse shoes
And we ate the seeds out of green beans like foragers
The backyard was the ocean and we were its voyagers?

Do you remember the day we all looked up
And watched the eclipse through the cereal box
And we’d try to stay up but we’d fall right asleep
And we walked through the park and into the creek?

Do you remember the days that we ran in the rain
And baked brownies that burned and wrote comics and sang
All out of tune with your old CD player
Laid Celeste in the yard, buried layer by layer?

Do you remember the days that we ruled over kingdoms
Together in worlds that were all our own
We’d leave food for fairies
Defeat adversaries
And walk hand-in-hand back home?

Do you remember those days?
Because I do
And do you think someday we’ll look back and rue
The day that we left it all behind
And traded our fairies for humankind?

Fulmore

8th