It's Still Life

The Summer We Lost Childhood

We were 6th grade. The big kids,
and we walked the rail line.
Its steel shining, a thin string
of silver silk that disappeared
into the distance as if
swallowed by trees and life’s path.
It was a balancing game. Practise.
To see who’d go the farthest.

Those summers were full of inaudible
wishes, butterfly wings quivering
in the breeze like a blue flame.
Even back then, nature drew us
into hushed motion, extreme silence
just before a storm, and somewhere
on that railway line, we lost
childhood’s magic. We stopped
speaking long before we were dead.

 
© Misky 2016
 
for Poetic Bloomings “Summer Magic“