Summer Camp

we sit on the cabin porch when we first hold hands.
god's on our radio and you snap your hairtie against your wrist when you hear the forecast:

"over 100, humid, like always;

shake the pine needles out your shoes and pray for clear skies."

you say you're still wanting to keep in touch after graduation, and i smile, because it's a promise you've made since 9th grade, and you look at the run of cheek between my mouth and
my eyes, and i feel ghosts crawl up behind my waist, one to hurt and heal and one to ravish and love and choke. behind god’s trees, our group leader reaches our names on the
clipboard and counts the splinters he can see on us. he’s every man trapping you in the halls when he suggests you grow your hair out, leaving only when he’s certain you will. i ask why you put up with it and you just laugh, tired.

we kiss when we move to the broom closet.
you say the birth marks on my neck look like a vampire bite and trace them like an old scar.

“we know now Saturn’s storms, king of too much;

you’ll cut off your arm before ever feeling happy.”

you spread your touch further and ask me if it's okay, and i ask you if it's okay, and our breath worms through our collared shirts, spinning toward the sliced root of all symbolism, and you ask me if it’s okay, and we start to entwine into sprouting ginger, rhizomatic and colossal and weightless and papercut, and i ask you if it’s okay, and i tell you i love you and i ask if it’s okay, and the warmth between us holds the words like a baby duck in gentle soap and i love you so much, and you tell me it’s okay, and you kiss me because it really is, and just as we know Saturn’s storms, where space breaks static and connection no longer need worry and we float on assemblages of ‘i’m so happy’ and ‘i could cry i’m so happy’, the legs we shaved for each other are pulled through the warped floorboards by the devil, fanged and premarital and stuck at our waistline.

it takes our breath away at first, as he’s finally caught up with us, as we knew he always would.
we kick off our sneakers to empty into the thick grass below the cabin, but nothing happens except relief, tickling us through our socks.
i cut a finger failing to pull myself out and we laugh at how the blood keeps moving down my arm. you press your forehead against mine and smile, wider than the strip of milky way only seen out here.

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