Rosey

Ring around the

rosey is fifteen going on sixteen but feels like ten going on twenty, straddling somewhere between the little girl with her rosebud lips in an O upturned towards the sky and the demure lady resisting the urge to fling her umbrella aside and stamp alongside the raindrops in their feverish dance across the city streets. she stands beside him as he holds the umbrella for two of them and she cannot stop herself from thinking of those sugar-spun kisses in the rain she's seen in those starstruck movies, but saccharine is so out of style (though she can't help but wonder if her first will taste sweet like caramel drizzled atop a chocolate and vanilla sundae, or tangy like chilled raspberry lemon sorbet). she remembers when she was a kid, how she'd keep the beautiful rainbow swirled lollipops encased in their plastic wrapping because they were too beautiful to be defiled by her little catlike tongue, and yet curiosity killed the cat and she'd try a little lick here and there until she'd find herself with nothing left but headless lollipop sticks. it's like that with him sometimes -- she wonders if the taste of his lips will fill that hunger of hers or if he'll disappear before she'd ever feel full. it's not enough for her when she can't tell if or how much he cares; he'd given her

A pocketful of

posies earlier this afternoon but she doesn't like the flowers much, not when the fragrance devours his scent and fills her lungs in a leaden perfume overdose. still, her hands reach into her pockets from time to time to feel the silken petals brush against her fingers, as if she's afraid the scorching scarlet-blush fever he's infected her with will leave her with nothing but a handful of pepper-grey

Ashes,

ashes spilling out of her pockets like Hansel's breadcrumbs, though she imagines a line of wild flowers sprouting out of the dust behind her. suddenly it feels as if every inch of her skin is burning and so she runs out into the rain as the cool moisture breathes over her and he calls out her name as she splashes in the puddles and for an instant she thinks he thinks she's weird, but then he casts the umbrella aside and runs after her and then they are ten years old again, catching the falling dancers with their rounded O's and darting tongues, not caring that their clothes are soaked through like translucent insect wings -- (her eyes trace the contours of his chest and his follow the curves of her body and both are not shy) -- and when he holds her hand for the first time, she almost passes out from the electricity. the rain is falling, he is falling and she is falling and

we all fall down.