She walks by wearing blue stockings in the rainy afternoon
Her youth is like a tender dream
She wears a pair of adolescent stars from her ears
All her boyfriends, when they speak, sound like cool rivers
In the sky-blue of the day
She smiles
The way lilac bushes crush petals into joy

Now three o’clock in the precious afternoon of torn cotton strands
School lets out a riot of sapphire glitter
Some girl stripes her vanilla ice cream cone with azure breathing
On seeing this she faints like a toss of sprinkles

She’s woken by blue candy kisses
Like a cluster of stars falling
From a boy
Upon her face
The constellation of a crush

As she gets up
A thousand blue ponies slide from her rain-water hair
Before disappearing in the distance
Young children mount them tackling flowers

She kisses him
And lets slide the sky-blue of the day from her lips
His arms fall like water around her body
As she turns, racing to make friends with
The twinkling blue of a butterfly’s eye

© Matthew Goff