I almost cried the second time her thigh grazed mine. The air shared between school girl fantasies of jump rope and freshly baked poppy seed cupcakes. Just enough to make me ponder whether the bounds of earthly consciousness were an object of her manipulation. And I, simply her willing subject.  

The oh too warm days on the side of the pool. The bright rays permeating the soft pretty pink promise of youth. Never delineating from the canvas of blue gray green tiger stripes I captured every time I looked up at her.

There were only feelings of nervousness, maybe a little anxiety. The feeling of a canary perched in its open top brass haven of beautiful imprisonment.

That’s what it was like being in love with Eloise.

Protrusions of the finest rose thorns. Strangulation by way of sweet, sweet cyanide. Dropping off the prepossessing coast of Amalfi.

I hoped that she too never stopped touching me, but I knew that a boy would come.

A boy would come to take me gentle Eloise away. To contort her limbs and fantasies of childlike innocence into rough boyhood.

Why should she try to keep up with him?

I was warm. I refuged her hollow bones as one does a migrant sparrow.

But like any kind thing, you must issue release. For the worlds most marvelous of things have no business being kept from displaying their beauty.

The way her feet curved and curled at my unsavory dispositions. The hugging of sandles by way of freckles and blue glitter dolphins.

I knew how I felt.

I knew because I had felt this way before.

Never daunting, or in bad taste. Not shamefully or with unrelenting dissatisfaction.

So how come she couldn’t do the same.

How come I’m left with camera film of beachy Saturday’s and coffee gelato. Of ripe succulent fruit. Her strawberry lip balm. Tire spokes peaking out of the side of mulberry bushes, and the space between our palms when her hands interlaced with mine.

And she’s left with none of me at all.