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December 14, 2022

Orange Night

Maya Sol Levy

Can you tell that I like you? And this humid hum, and this orange night — this city, my frizz, our mischief and bug bites?

Park lamps cast shadows on our faces in this synthetic summer dawn bred after last light; they turn on the fluorescents before us blue lovers ever really need them.

Can you guess what I'm thinking? I've already promised my memory the glint in your eyes and the sweat on my palm.

And you look at me like you've never seen my teeth before, as if school starts tomorrow and our mothers expect us home. They might have when we were younger. But these days, the park belongs to us and this orange night, where now, we learn to parent each other.