Hanging On

The simplicity of solitude --
A miracle, which lingered
In the air around our words,
Dried the sweat off our backs
As we lay in the sun,
Two young girls unprepared
For the rest of their lives.

Uncertainty hovering on the edges
Of consciousness, where we made plans
To always stay just like this.
Fresh striplings - unaware that the world
Could be so cruel.

And at the beginning, where we started,
Find yourself not so different from the woman you are now.
Changed only by those few moments
That we had our eyes closed.
Never realizing that we would never be able to go back.

Did you stand outside yesterday at dusk?
Heaven burned green and washed purple to the Earth.
All things were charged with the electricity of the Sun,
Beneath the thickening coolness of sleep.
Thunder trembled across the cosmos,
Bouncing from wisps of rainbow to clouds painted with hellfire
As trees receded into silhouettes. All things were there…
All things as close, as distant, as inseparable as day and night --
As together and unregretting as you and I.

In these fleeting moments
When dark velvet night and fiery red day touch,
United around our tiny moon in a halo the size of a billion galaxies,
All things are almost possible or almost inevitable.
There are worlds where human halos
Come from dreaming or from falling.
Where God can make the sky rain yellow flowers
And children stay young forever.

But in our world signs are only subtle
Reminders that hanging on is all we have left.