The trees and the river
where we loved to go.
With tents and dried kindling,
the fire, its glow.

Make swings in the trees
with mud on our knees.
Completing scout tasks
and the badges we'd sew.
Make rafts that we'd sail
and the scout songs, regail.

We'd follow the river
to see it unfold.
Now none of us go there
now that we're old.

Poetry by Kaydee

You were never there.

And you never tried.

You had a chance,
but you stepped aside.

You never read me
stories,
or kissed me
good-night.

You never took me camping,
or even for a bike ride.

Now I'm a big girl,
and you can't buy me toys.

But that's ok,
cuz you never did in the first place,
though you had the choice.

How the night turns cold
as I sit under the stars
The grass grows moist
around the plastic mat
Droplets of dew appear
on the walls of the tent
As I tune in to the nocturnal
song of the crickets

The fire dies, the fire dies outside.

-X-

As usual, the last juice in my phone battery petered out as the bluetooth speaker positioned on the picnic table started beeping and repeating the word "pairing" over and over.

That was the last bit of company that I would be able to fool myself with that night.

The rustle of the mighty firs and the deafening quiescence of the oak trees proved to be a captious audience, with the only essence choking back the seeping darkness a fire pit, searing brilliantly at nightfall.

The flames crackled and burst in the sap-filled wood, giving me an opportunity to drown the eve in the fire's sporadic, propulsive popping.

With no more music to accompany me in the night, I tuned my old guitar, which was resting in the backseat of my car, and I slowly worked out the notes to several melancholy acoustics that I treasured in earnest and frequented as I did eating and breathing.

My world should be quiet, but my brain never sleeps.

As if possessed by a sudden desire to purge old memories, I threw that old album that we so cherished in along with the next few logs.

In a panicked frenzy, I pulled the book as quickly as I set it down, hands searing from the heat, and I stamped out the flames with an old coat I had brought with me.

Throwing another log onto the campfire, I took a dried rag I had soaked in some copper chloride and watched as the flame that came out shined almost a sea-foam green, different from the azure I was expecting.

For once, the aforementioned seeping darkness had crept to the corners of the campsite as the brilliant display lit up the whole area, proving to both be a fantastic show of color as well as the first truly chromatic moment that had happened in ages.

No one had come, of course. It was as expected. It's cold as a glacier and there's hardly any beer, so I wouldn't really blame them.

That's it, maybe we're thinking glass half full.

Slumber met me with its sweet embrace, the only silence I would permit to befall me and the only silence I had been grateful to.

Pale sunshine pierced through a single cloud in the morning late.

A crisp chill and the light drip-pat-pat of the falling rain outlined my mood better than my words were able to.

I'm not sure what I need to feel satisfied, but a glass half empty is not a glass half full.

I checked my phone, which had been on a power bank all night, hoping to have companionship other than a text from my parents or a message from my girlfriend telling me to cheer up again.

Of course, the phone was only at 25%, and I had better get moving if I wanted to be home and enjoy the constant rattling of every day life that drowned these natural sounds out.

If I'm only half-here, then I might as well leave.

I must have been the last one to have been ground to rubble.

I had remained oblivious for many years, before I knew what it was to be without my trademark foolish optimism.

That pale sunshine would have served me a fiery orange, scorching the awoken sky in a torrid, infectious sprightliness.

What was once a glorious, chromatic panorama had become a single, stilted picture frame long discarded, the glass broken from frequented moments of reminiscing.

If I had left months ago, would any of you have remembered me?

As I prepared to leave, I picked up that old photo album, now singed at the edges, and picked up my slippers from the side of the fire pit, which were left to dry and instead showered in the early morning.

I threw the photo album in the trunk and packed the rest of my belongings, heading back home to Camillus where I could pretend that all of this noise was good for me.