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July 1, 2018

The Summer before Everything Changed. {Poem}

It was but a moment in time,
when all the world was spinning,
a spinning, flashing roller rink,
of “Don’t Stop Believin’,”
and “Take it on the Run,” baby,
and long Farrah Fawcett feathered hair,
and tight designer jeans,
and cigarettes, and sneaking around,
and all those little lies we told each other,
about who we were, and what we knew,
all the things we conspired to do,
when the whole wide world was a beginning,
unguarded, unbiased, new,
and oh how it seeped with our passion,
how it sent our hearts aflutter,
over every last little thing,
every argument, every kiss,
every nighttime drama with a daytime consequence,
with that Scott Baio-looking boy,
the one who drove a motorcycle,
the one who killed me with his smile,
who broke my heart twice before graduation,
who said I was foxy,
while we drank warm beer,
in that hazy meadow clearing,
with “D’yer Mak’er” blasting,
when he leaned in on me,
and oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
he hurt me to my soul,
after he made my stomach flip,
and it all went down so easy,
a moment expertly unzipped,
as June gave birth to July,
and mellow days were counted,
they flew right by, marked by fleeting hours,
afloat on a little lake in paradise,
nestled inside a tire tube,
with one toe gripping the dock,
I was Lolita then,
my cherry lip smackers, white wayfarers,
and bare skin shining like hope in the sun,
with the whole world ahead,
so far out in front of me,
just spinning,
and I was winning,
but only because I was young,
which is all I ever needed to be,
without fear or jaded notions,
not a painful thing inside me,
except for maybe one,
it was but a brief moment,
that summer before,
before everything else,
when life itself was more like a bursting spring,
and that wide open world was merely a spinning thing,
waxing, waning, a pendulum swing,
when I felt just like a kaleidoscope top,
dropped, and hopping,
when all of it meant everything,
those things I can’t explain away,
my “Train in Vain” heartache lingers to this day,
and in a blink it all changed,
the universe rearranged,
July vanished, and it was August,
when I filled my suitcase with sweaters,
and became someone else.

~

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Kimberly Valzania  |  Contribution: 142,030

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