Best friends a long time ago

We were holding our breaths, breathing for each other, sharing particles of space and time through watermelon seed spit-offs and swimming endless circles in the water trough – so fast so hard, centrifugal force made us dizzy. Excitement forced our retreat and we evaporated into the dog-eared pages of Mark Twain, flopped on feather mattresses, the window fan's chopping blades transporting adventure on a thin sheet of air.

Other times cussing and fighting, wrestling in the pasture, we'd say those things that pierce flesh. I'd run away to rant and plot payback, scream from the barn loft and there, the individual smells of oats, hay and horses saturated my tears, became indiscernible from one another – and I saw us in the splattering homogenous drops – inseparable.

We always found what had never been lost and would then search together for our own fences and snakes, navigate riverboats in the creek, ride horses around bales of hay, practice cartwheels and pick apples. With the sun winking goodbye, finally we'd fall asleep on huge quilted blankets held together by nothing but string, but thread, but fiber that I'm forever sorry lasted longer than us, than you.

~

words: Shelly Rae Rich, North Carolina (Shell's)
photo: Inge Flessa-Glauner, Germany (touch-the-blue)