A clock ticks somewhere
in the distance and sends
me spinning straight into
the eye of a hurricane. Blink
and heat shimmers on the slicked
surface, a golden haze settling
on roads we have gone down
before but are now unrecognizable.
It moves in waves, like the ocean
did the summer we ran barefoot
down the splintered boardwalk,
past the twisted dunes, found oasis--
This rippling mirage clouds time
and we allow our scorching skin
to melt away like sweet confections
into those swelling seas of dreams.
I run my sticky cotton-candy fingers
through your saltwater-laced hair
and watch them dissolve before
sinking my teeth into your bottom lip--
just to see what life could have been like
if we had stayed on the same wavelength.
I fight reality and leap towards Wonderland
pier in the hopes of falling down the rabbit
hole and preserving the fantasy that lets
me find us there once again and stop time.
in the distance and sends
me spinning straight into
the eye of a hurricane. Blink
and heat shimmers on the slicked
surface, a golden haze settling
on roads we have gone down
before but are now unrecognizable.
It moves in waves, like the ocean
did the summer we ran barefoot
down the splintered boardwalk,
past the twisted dunes, found oasis--
This rippling mirage clouds time
and we allow our scorching skin
to melt away like sweet confections
into those swelling seas of dreams.
I run my sticky cotton-candy fingers
through your saltwater-laced hair
and watch them dissolve before
sinking my teeth into your bottom lip--
just to see what life could have been like
if we had stayed on the same wavelength.
I fight reality and leap towards Wonderland
pier in the hopes of falling down the rabbit
hole and preserving the fantasy that lets
me find us there once again and stop time.
Erica Abbott has been published in Toho Journal and Flora Fiction. She will be releasing her first poetry chapbook this year, titled Self Portrait as a Sinking Ship. Find her on Instagram @poetry_erica.