Bells

Perfect summer evenings, the colors trickle down the curve of the globe, the breeze comes in along the avenue just so, like the stage direction is meticulous, like the producers spare no expense, it is blissful. Last night, along the river, the fireflies were out in force, exploding their little beams of light across the water as if guiding the ships safely back to port. In the distance, summer lightning struck a dry sky, silent thunder smacking on the inside like held back rage that flickers across your eyes when you're trying to know better. These words might not even mean anything anymore; I know they used to cut me till I bled, I know they ached and tore in me with their absence, and now here they are spelled out in the soft space between us and I can no longer understand what they mean. There were fireworks in the far depths of Brooklyn last night, red blooms illuminating the bricks in silence, and then gone. I sat on a rock on my side of the river, staring past the throngs of late night runners looking to escape the heat, and trying to remember what I was escaping. Perfect summer evenings, how they are impossible to catch but you know them when your fingertips run across their air, how you remember every time they whisper your name in the night. There's a lesson in there how everything ends, but it is June now, and somehow
everything is only
beginning.