Caroline Lewis
With the flash of the firework,
our eyes light up,
our hands wave sparklers and strew rose petals carelessly–
across the lawn, across the years.
The smell mingles
with that of the gunpowder,
and together they become the nostalgia
of a memory in the wind.
As you scrunch your eyes and laugh,
as you bite into a ripe strawberry,
I see myself
in your eyes
and when I touch you,
when we laugh, I am reminded
of the smoke of a vanished firework
lit up and glowing
with the flash from one after;
a ghost, a memory
becoming reality for a split second–
a second too late.
we are children in our small world,
dance with me one more time…
We are young;
our laughter spins on through the years,
growing, I think, more diminutive
as we grow taller
and the gap grows wider,
but amid the stars and the sky and the smoke,
something is immortalized.
Somewhere between the flash and the smoke
there is life, life and oh, so much light.
I will always meet you there in the space between,
where our hearts reside
and our memories touch.
We will never be here again,
but we will never be far apart.
The world is big and scary,
but here, we are oh, so small,
here where the roses bloom and the fireworks burst
and we are young and bold.