Sugar Pants
cloud fibres carded,
stretched over sky blue canvas –
the colour of jeans, bleached
from the haze of a 1989 summer day.
those were the days, weren’t they?
those were the days that go the way
only delicious dreams can dissolve on waking.
no – like how candy crystals soften
to stain lips grape,
to match cherry shoulders,
and the blueberry stars bursting
from our sugar sack pants.
the “extra fine” cotton
(gifted, from a dad’s punishing days on the docks
shoveling sweetener under the shimmering molten heat)
now renewed into uniforms
fit for those precious few weeks
that spool with possibility between school years.
we became tie-dyed-in-the-wool explorers,
building new empires in crushed rock and mud,
bartering at the pop shoppe for more sweets to quench our neon thirst
that remained unslaked by water from the hose
or single fans spreading stale air around your bedroom.
and now?
I look up to white streaks on denim and yearn to see castles to conquer again.
I close my eyes to conjure you through the humid reverie.
but it’s like we’re wrapped in waxed paper;
there are barely shapes that suggest
a smile,
a smear of popsicle,
a silhouette of sugar pants
worn until they were cirrus clouds.
those were the days.
Previously Shared on my Substack
campfire notebook. 