We sit on 

the swinging chair on the back porch 

in the summer. 

The wind is sweet with 

honeysuckle waiting to be bitten from the bottom, 

waiting for our tongues to lap up 

it’s sugary dew. 

Perhaps we are drunk on the Solstice’s burning sky, 

and it’s smoldering orange-pink gradient hues, 

but we giggle like children, 

clutching our 

stitched sides

as smiles tug 

the skin of pink lips. 

We don’t touch and yet

we are a single entity, 

bound by sisterhood and 

the blood rising 

to our cheeks. 

We tiptoe through the brush and

fill the folded-up edges of our shirts

with wild raspberries and 

tart pseudo-blackberries 

who stain our collars 

a bloody shade of crimson. 

The trees in the surrounding forest

behind the grand white house 

are like thin, bent men, 

branches reaching, 

outlined against the 

the indigo sky

like the capillaries in our lungs. 

When our bellies are filled and round, 

and our lips are sweet with juice, 

when the yellow waning crescent 

peeks over the distant tree tops, 

then and only then 

do we march our bare feet 

across the mossed and leaved forest floor. 

As the warm light of the 

grand white house

appears at the top of the hill, 

our toes begin to dance, 

our dresses kissing

the fingers of air currents 

that touch our skin and leave 

a trail of goosebumps up our arms. 

Our heels are caked in mud, 

but we don’t care. 

Your eyes are two 

yellow waning crescents 

against a freckled sky. 

We are two bent sunflowers

leaning our orange heads towards the sun. 

We are two skinny trees, 

fingers stretched

like capillaries against the sky.