The Strawberry moon found me tonight
drifting through the shadows.
The moon held court over mischievous stars
dancing in silver pirouettes
along the crests of the clouds.
I recalled the two of us
that summer evening in '92
lying naked in the tall grass, laughing,
tangled in knots.
You were eighteen.
I was twenty-two.
Your college acceptance letter
perched like a winning lottery ticket
on my dashboard.
We celebrated your escape
with a bottle of gas-station champagne.
I danced around you int he hot moonlight.
You worried we would be seen.
Those were days of innocence and defiance.
The world was remaking itself again:
old empires loosened their grip,
a new South Africa stepped into the sunlight,
Soviet flags folded half a world away.
Back home, the streets of Los Angelese
burned for Rodney King.
We watched it idly on the television
and felts its echo
in the small revolutions of a kiss,
your laughter on my chest,
the sweet audacity of being young.
History turned outside our orbit,
and we barely noticed,
believing our turning was the center of it all.
We did not understand
that time steps through the tall grass
without looking down,
pressing its mark into everything it touches.
Youth is a clean wound.
You don't feel the sting until
something buried surfaces,
the barb works its way
back through the skin.
I smiled thinking of this
and stepped into the prickly pear,
cutting myself
on the memory of you.
