You’d be mistaken if you said the stones didn’t feel hotter than the sand beneath your feet. Casting circles along the ground, light shimmers between the trees. Flowers reach up to it, along the way shedding petals. I walk on, gathering about me my dress.
I’ve found recently that I’m happiest in a dress. Reminiscing memories of prom, I imagine a floor of stones instead of tile and a corsage of intricate petals And a sea of feet, Swaying to a slow song, like flowers sway into the light
in Sanibel. Imagine our venue as Sanibel where light brightens every picture and blesses every dress; where the appearance of flowers isn’t just a corsage or pretty weeds poking through stones; where sand adornes feet and wind means a breeze of perfumed petals.
Twirling down from the trees, petals blink with color in the light and stick to ocean-water bathed feet shaded by my dress. Days are spent winding along stones of Sanibel’s flowing garden of flowers
And it becomes captivating. I find elegance in flowers like prom attendees. They bat their eyes like petals alight softly on stones. I see so much light, I would twirl and twirl and twirl in my dress, spinning on feet
And if my feet never touch the ground, at least they’ve danced to lush flowers and at least my dress has spilled out around me, meeting petals soaking light, cloaking stones.
In Sanibel, I dress for bare feet. I let myself not be heavy as a stone, I let myself flower. And I collect petals, to remind me things wither without light.
This poem is a Sestina that I wrote for my creative writing class.