The Circus

Dedicated to Hannah. I wrote this for you and I still think about you. I hope you’re doing well.
Appropriate for: Young Adult and upwards

The grass was dead when the circus came to town. Every year it crunched underfoot with a crackling, curmudgeonly admonishing.

But I didn’t care.

We hadn’t met then, not really. But your shadow met mine when the sun hung low enough to send shade in furtive streaks upon the ground. Low and long and hunted.

You told me you would see it, too. The shimmer. The shake. The tiny peripheral movement that mirrored what we could do.

But opposite. So very opposite.

A soothing, soaking opposite that made us whole.

And the grass was always dead when the circus came to town.

The paths were always snow-buried when the circus set up in the city. Always on the outskirts, never quite accepted, never quite home. The muted, reverberated chew of thick soles in solidifying powder.

You told me your trek to the circus crunched and mine did, too. So differently to yours. So diametrically different but I felt understood. Just as you stood with wizened grass and I with packed ice under me. We just understood.

Shadows came wan and pale to me in the circus season, but I still saw it. Felt it. The flitter. The flutter.

I wanted to reach and grasp it, but just like a single snowflake, it could only rest and not be caught.

And the paths were always snow-buried when the circus set up in the city.