Strawberries

It was a spur of the moment kind of thing. A drop your books in the grass and smile to yourself kind of thing. A warm lips on cold skin behind a curtain of shining hair kind of thing. It was never a fireworks kind of thing, but it tasted sweet like strawberries in summer and pink lemonade spiked with vodka, sipped from neon straws on the back porch. It was a champagne bubbles kind of thing, a snowflakes on your hair and skin and eyelashes kind of thing. A toes curling tightly inside your shoes ‘cause it felt so good kind of thing. 

There was nothing but lips and hands and that curtain of shiny hair, golden mixing with almost black. And you could barely taste the vodka on her lips because everything tasted like strawberries to you in that moment, cool and clean and shining, dipped in sparkling sugar crystals and eaten with a grin.

It was a glow sticks and body glitter and loud thumping music under an almost full blue moon. It was a best friends, hands in each other’s back pockets, never gonna let you go kind of thing. And it was scary. Scary because it was a crazy beautiful kind of thing. It was a maybe you shouldn’t have done that kind of thing. A hands in your pockets, eyes on your sneakers, scared senseless kind of thing. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted and it makes you want to cry because its so beautiful and so fleeting that for a second you think you think you’ve imagined it, but it makes you shiver and it makes you shake and you can still feel the warmth on the back of your neck. 

You were seven years old again, standing on the edge of the dock, pinching your nose until you have the guts to jump in. You are splashing in the water, cold and sparkling and emerald green, grinning as rivulets stream down your face into your open mouth. You are triumphant in your celebration. And you are thirteen again, walking across the gym, hair curled, hands shaking, asking a boy to dance. You are grinning wildly, hands awkwardly spaced on his shoulders, swaying to a late ninties pop song you still know all the words to. And you are sixteen standing on the edge of twenty-foot cliff, hands scratched, face pale, trembling violently as you press yourself against the sun warmed rocks. A boy you’ve never seen before offers you his hand and you step timidly to the edge, toes curling in you waterlogged sneakers. And then you are soaring through the air, you are crashing into the water, you are happier than you’ve ever been before.

And now you are on the edge of the world kissing your best friend, books in the grass, hands in her hair, toes curled tightly in your sneakers. Everything still tastes like strawberries and feels like dusk and you are holding on for dear life, because its an ‘oh my god I just kissed my best friend’ kind of thing, an ‘oh my god what will my mother think kind of thing,’ an ‘I’m so happy it hurts to breath’ kind of thing. You don’t understand it, and you don’t pretend to, but it doesn’t matter because there are hands in your hair and on your on face and its an all you’ve got left kind of thing.