The Summer I Was Sixteen
Geraldine Connolly
The turquoise pool rose up to meet us,
its slide a silver afterthought down which
we plunged, screaming, into a mirage of bubbles.
We did not exist beyond the gaze of a boy.
Shaking water off our limbs, we lifted
up from ladder rungs across the fern-cool
lip of rim. Afternoon. Oiled and sated,
we sunbathed, rose and paraded the concrete,
danced to the low beat of "Duke of Earl".
Past cherry colas, hot-dogs, Dreamsicles,
we came to the counter where bees staggered
into root beer cups and drowned. We gobbled
cotton candy torches, sweet as furtive kisses,
shared on benches beneath summer shadows.
Cherry. Elm. Sycamore. We spread our chenille
blankets across grass, pressed radios to our ears,
mouthing the old words, then loosened
thin bikini straps and rubbed baby oil with iodine
across sunburned shoulders, tossing a glance
through the chain link at an improbable world.
Random Fact # 12: Sunburned Penguins are black and white and red all over apparently...though I have never seen a sunburned penguin...
(yet again I snuck in...this will be my 3rd random fact of the post, but as I am responding to literature how can I help myself...anywho, I will not be counting it due to reasons that exhist only in the backest corners of my mind, that will be all. 3nodding
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poke me now! *is being daring*...*runs away squeaking*
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