Amanda J. Crawford
I remember the golden grass under our blanket and the way
the light made the withered blades and our bold young flesh
glow in the unparalleled brightness of autumn just before
sunset. Naked and exposed in the rustling breeze, pressed
against each other, the blanket, the earth. My head on his bird
chest listening to the sound of his breath below and swallows
above as my gaze fell down the slouching horizon:
Down, to the line of trees sequestering this square of fallow field;
to the blanched stalks of corn beyond that jut upward with broken
arms, robbed of swaddled kernels; to the lonely home of a timid girl
with whom my love would soon betray me and the duo of chestnuts
grazing in her yard; to the crooked banks of Antietam Creek, where
the next thunderstorm would erase traces of parties spiked with
my parents’ vodka on the floodplain.
I remember golden grass, the glow of our flesh before
sunset came and stole the warmth, and the breeze
turned crisp and supper called, and we put on our clothes
and took our blanket, leaving behind things we would only miss
decades later.