Quiet as dew, I sneaked out
of the house early one morning to
meet friends on the hill behind our
neighborhood elementary school.
The sky was big near the football field,
and the dark hid us from each other,
hid everything about us except our white shirts.
We followed voices until our eyes adjusted, and
clustered like mushrooms in a fairy ring; here a
damp kiss and a feel, there a riveting storyteller
and a gasp. We played freely until the sky yawned
and licked her lips. Then, dawn snapped her fingers,
commanding our sodden brains and greenstick
bodies to home. Baby falcons, tethered, but rank
with thoughts of cloudy altitude, we were flightless,
like vaporous sheets flapping helplessly on the back
yard line, caught. The wet grass on the stairs to my
bedroom created little matted carpets my unspoken lies
couldn’t crawl under.
©PL Byrd 8/2010
