PICKET FENCE

 PICKET FENCE

estefaaano_writes 

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That summer we were gods of small things,

white paint bleeding into our fingerprints,

your laugh is a sharp bright coin

tossed into the drowning air.

Your brush knew secrets mine had yet to learn,

bold white strokes like declarations

while I hesitated at the edge of growing.

The porch held us like cupped hands,

your head heavy with dreams against my thighs.

Fireflies wrote their brief obituaries

beyond our small kingdom of wood and want.

We spoke of futures like prayers,

as if the violet sky might answer back,

as if the stars were listening.

When the slat broke, 

I became all thumbs and failure,

your laughter, a soft ache

before you showed me gentleness.

The gate sang its rust song for us,

your footstep's the only music I knew.

I counted pickets like rosary beads,

like pulses, like time itself,

until you appeared with your arms 

full of ordinary miracles.

Seasons turned us inside out,

leaves fell like love letters

we never learned to read.

Our fence wore its scars proudly,

and we painted over them each spring,

blind to the slow rot beneath,

the way endings grow in secret.

Now, I stand witness

one hand pressed to peeling paint,

the other clutching air.

Memory seeps through the cracks

like water through a broken dam.

This fence, once the border of our shared skies,

now divides me from myself.

White turns to yellow,

the way old photographs do,

the way love does

when left too long in sunlight.