"Just Another Walk in the Park"

by Joe Velarde

As we were with our feet pressed to aluminum petals,
in the middle of the street, waving
cars passed our tiny hands, Ponsford Park.
The tread of our wheels zipping past black
asphalt, tingling our frozen noses, dirt whipping
into our heads like wind cannons,
giving us something to write about, but not that day.
We were still children.

“Bag it up,” she said, her
fingers moved around the
ziplock binding like snakes, clamping
the sides, nails tapping,
matching greens tightly so we
wouldn’t spill over on the way home.
Her legs crossed, thighs rubbing
against each other, lace placed high on her black stokings,
mumbling something dirty. Something
really dirty.
The leviathan that once
swallowed us up in the middle of
the night, bare feet, legs uncovered, rested
on soft grass, cold in the night’s windless
wake,
will come back and ask us for our names this time.
We’ll toast it back to hell with a flick of her
lit cigarette, burnt down to the filter. Blue lips
and cold legs crossed, black skirt and a loose shirt,
peaks past my hand when it moves over
her back.
The bone of her shoulder blade
pressing against her skin makes her
a woman.
We decide to move to a higher hill
and close out our night with a gunshot-like, Hawaiian lei swaying
under the rearview, tight corners, around the empty street
meets opened-mouth smiles pressed up to each other with a 21 popshot lullaby.