When you are a snake sliding out of its silky skin
for the first time…
The world feels cold
You are ten years old again
Leaping into the ice waters of your neighbor’s pool before noon
Giggling, racing, dancing
Childhood is a prayer that your imagination will never escape you.
The tenderness of sweet joy that ripples through the pure
You swore that you would never smile again until today
You are twenty-one, not ten.
You’ve gotten a taste of what this life is truly like.
And a girl with rabbits just approached you in the park
Animals can read your secrets
before you can quite place them at the tip of your tongue
like how you aren’t sure what’s good for you
Experiences race like your summer days at that pool
They come and go and the curse of imperfect memory humbles you
Dancing, twirling, fading childhood of a time not long ago
Where you used to know how to be present,
As you would sit outside, reeking of chlorine
and eating grapefruit with your friends,
making faces at the sour taste
You don’t know what you want out of this life,
only that you want to suck every piece of joy and tenderness
and pain
out of this grapefruit that you split open with a long knife
like the crevices in your heart that ache so badly
for another average day