Something pink about the way playmate turns to lover turns to pilot turns to

Drifter in sky

Turns to animal in sky

But to my vindication you were never that obscene to me

You come back to places that spit you back out and still manage to fly

Faster than the industrious men who flick their mustache hairs

Deaf to the cries that twist them more into buccaneer than honor-weathered men

Pirates, overjoyed to gamble a pigs life (and lose)

I sing to them – a facade, unlike how I sang to you

My voice skims the Adriatic and its waves crash a true blue

There’s something red about the way she follows in your footsteps

And you come out of it bruised, blood-stained and redder still

Moments choke, fair-weather heroes fall

All of a sudden I’m clogged up with memory

It tastes of brine and Adriatic sweat, and latent romance

Those days your boyhood was green and wild and still staunch like steel

You took me out to sea and you took me to the air

Looking down at the waves, churning tide

Before your reflection shouted swine

Long before you were a creature of war

Years before you would trace the outline of your compatriots in breathless clouds

You were a boy in the way I was a girl

Something blue about the way you come back to the sea and sky

And my garden, everlasting

There’s something red to be said about fly-by goodbyes

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Julia is a writer and comfort-enthusiast from Pennsylvania. She is often curled up with her goofy cat Larry and rewatching movies.