Summer Nights - There You Are

Summer nights arrive like a dare.

Salt in the air, skin still warm from the sun,

the whole world buzzing low and electric

like power lines humming over an empty road.

And suddenly being alive feels unbearable in the best way.

You feel it in your pulse first.

In the way music sounds fuller after dark,

in the way your body becomes all appetite and ache,

wanting something unnamed

until it becomes someone.

Someone with a gravity to them.

Someone you can feel approaching

before they ever touch you.

The yearning of it almost ruins you.

The waiting.

The sharp little hunger living beneath your ribs,

stretching wider every time you imagine

their hands finding the small of your back,

their mouth near enough to wreck your concentration,

their eyes holding yours

like they already know exactly how this ends.

And maybe that’s the madness of summer nights.

How they convince you collision is destiny.

How they make your bones believe

there is a person somewhere under the same moon

who could press their body against yours

and set every crooked thing back into place.

Not save you.

Not heal every wound.

But straighten the axis a little.

Quiet the noise.

Make the loneliness loosen its grip for one perfect moment.

As if their touch could turn the key in a locked room inside you

and all at once the lights flicker on.

And you stand there breathless,

ocean air tangled in your lungs,

heart pounding like a wild animal,

thinking:

there you are.