Poison Oak

We're sitting at the park again, her scabbed knees showing through worn out cutoff jeans, pale shoulders poking through a thin white shirt. More than anything I want to reach out and touch her, but I'm afraid contact with her skin might shatter each ounce of carefully crafted calm I've managed to paint over my anxiety. The birds are chirping, children laughing and bees buzzing but somehow things just don't seem as bright, the downward cast to her lips is ripping my world apart.

"Remember the last time you brought me here?" She asks, her quiet voice making my heart leap in anticipation of something, anything. "When everything seemed wrapped up in these silvery layers..."

She trails off, I swallow.

"Yes," I try to hate the way my voice cracks but I can't, knowing that emotion is everything and nothing all at once.

"What do you remember about it?"

I close my eyes, a smile creeping onto my lips as I remember the way her hair burned with the sunlight, how it felt to hold her hand and somehow feeling infinity in the way she pressed soft, open-mouthed kisses to the underside of my forearm. I tell her this and feel a heat prickling at my cheeks.

"I remember it differently," She says, and I feel a fissure forming and cracking apart my ribcage.