Sophie

15

"The Dance"
That night was our night.

Outrageous tutus hugging our hips,
songs sprouting from our lips,
we went with unmatchable exuberance,
for this was the night
that all campers await.

The humidity
of that old, chipped-paint lodge
greeted us almost as eagerly
as the boys.
The heat mimicked the limbs of the campers,
enveloping whatever bodies it could find,
until the adolescents in that room
became a singular entity–
a tangle of arms and lips
and sweat.

At some point
in the chaos of that evening,
two
detached from the whole.
Perspiring hands wrapped around a perspiring neck,
exhausted fingers found a decorate waist,
and we were in love.
In those moments,
swaying to the tune of the surrounding pandemonium
that couldn't quite touch us,
we were desperately, undeniably
in love.

When the playlists had been played and the drinks had been drunk,
us girls,
with our curls and our frills and our made-up faces,
boarded the bus,
the iridescent glow of which
seemed to symbolized
the fantastic surrealism of that night.
Silently, we left,
abandoning the lodge and the lake and the thick, warm air
and my passionately ephemerally romance.