Orange clouds

Lazily rolling across summer skies

Cousin’s laughter chases away

The darkness of another year gone

Reminds me that this isn’t the end of one age

It’s the beginning of another

Grass tickles flushed cheeks

The smell of chlorine lingering in still-wet hair

The ground pulses, breathes beneath me in the heat

And I can’t help but think

As I watch the silhouettes of those I love

Cut out of a background of candy-colored sky

These tiny, little lights in an infinitely larger universe

I can’t help but watch them and think

That I would give the whole universe away

For an eternity spent on the edge of seventeen

With a candy colored sky and chlorine hair

So that I could listen to that laughter

And remember that, no matter what the future may hold,

For one small, insignificant moment

I knew what true joy felt like

And I’ll know it when I see it again