found innocence

laughter and levity,
face in my palms.
we love with platonic intensity;
reminding me of the youth i shed,
in the town, with haste, i fled.

sitting in strip mall parking lots,
the whirlwinds in my head begin to slow
joy flashing before my eyes in snapshots
there is something so pure about this
sort of reminiscent bliss.

to be the guiltless kid i once was,
to see life through the eyes of a girl,
before she had to mend her wounds with gauze.
nostalgia clung to the air,
lifting the weight i could no longer bear.

fog lingers below perfectly spaced street lamps.
the quiet of the suburbs broken
by the soft muffle from the car
where we sit in stillness.
sharing movies and music and memories,
differences and dreams.
under the melancholic moon
we find the innocence we’d lost as time passed us by,
but we are each other’s north star; always found in the sky.