“May 16th 2016” by Autumn Moss

Youth in a spring afternoon I make fast friends

In high school we treat the people we just met as if we will be tied to them always and maybe we will

By a red promise thread connecting our pinkies together like the tin cans we’d use for make-shift telephones just a few years ago

We meet in a sculpture garden, flower garden, fountain we splash through with bare feet soaking our socks when we put them back on

The dry dusty dirt between the dandelion weeds we walk through sticks to our damp skin, bakes dry in the sun, and falls back down to the earth

We pause for lunch, sharing bites of homemade sandwiches and sticky drinks that will hurt our teeth five years from now

I take careful photographs of the rows of rose bushes at peak blume shamelessly evocatively flaunting the brightest fuschia I’ve ever seen

Later, I will overlay these pictures on top of each other creating an image fluffy with a dreamy midsummer haze

You can feel when the humidity collides with dusk and begin to dampen the grass beneath the picnic blanket

Decorated with a patchwork heart, made with heart-shaped hands, holding heart-shaped eyes, later tempting him to your plump heart-shaped lips

Golden hour foreshadows the tan that will deepen into your skin by August

The bumble bee buzz quiets, deferring to the rise of crickets in the still-warm air

I’m not yet old enough to pause, thinking this day will end

I’m not yet old enough to know I’ll remember this day forever