Campfire Stories

Chasing candy wrappers
across the heat stricken ground
Yelling about the tragedy
of melted reeces
And the book that lies
in the golden sand
its pages slightly crumpled at the corners
soaks in the sunlight

Long chocolate caramel hair
twisted with strawberry gets
tangled in the wind while
sugar coated tongues roll up syllables and verbs
and flick them them out between white teeth as sentences

Remnants of watermelon get finished while
games of backgammon get played and
the tarp above sheds thick blue light over
boys with dutch braided hair and
drawings of curly haired girls

The scents of bug spray and evergreen and campfire
braid themselves together and
Old laughter and moments seep out of every pore of this aged beat picnic table, 
are being pushed out of the decaying graying wood to be
re-filled with new pieces and crumbles 
of long hours made short by the music that
bubbles and sashayes out of sunchapped lips in the form of laughter

Flaking birch bark gets peeled off in papery layers 
by girls wearing beads and bone turtle necklaces
To be the first crackling bit of flickering life in the ring 
of charcoal and burnt marshmellow smeared rocks

Boys with earrings
throw pinecones at squirrels to keep them away
from our stash of flavor and nourishment
And towels bake in the late afternoon sunshine while
group pictures get taken, freezing
This moment in grainy pixels