Flower crowns, fireflies and laughter. 

When I think of that summer, that’s what I remember. 

Stars and forest and deep blue eyes, beckoning me forward. Deep and bright, as if they knew everything. All the mysteries of the world could be solved within their soul, and the greatest adventures came from their head, battles and epics of imagination.

 

We were fifteen and free. And wild. Untamable, forces of nature that never stayed still. Well, he was wild. I was more of a straight and narrow guy, staying within the rules and only tip toeing shyly along the lines. I don’t think he even knew there were lines. He danced back and forth across them, the lead in a one man show the whole world came to see.  

 

Until that summer. 

That summer we did everything. We stayed out for hours, eyes skyward, seeing the clouds make their long cross countries toward the horizon. We’d hardly move, simply stay on our backs for ages, pointing and listening and laughing. Laughter that echoed and bounced through the fields, filling, fogging up the world until we could hardly see anything but ourselves and the sky. Until the whole world was laughter.

 

We probably looked pretty curious. Flower crowns tangled up in bright red hair and dark brown curls. Always bits of leaves and grass and whatnot in our clothes, little messengers from our latest adventure. He was quirky. Always doing the weirdest thing, thinking the weirdest things, wearing the weirdest things. Converses covered in doodles and paints and dreams. Flowery shirts that fluttered in the wind and turned him into a prince. And the things he said. The weirdest. The best. That’s what made it so fun. He showed me that life within the lines lacked color, vigor, beauty. It was boring, dull, gray. That summer, our world was a painter’s palette. We were meadows and campfires and forts and seas and sky. Leaves and lakes and skipping stones and shooting stars. We fought epic battles against great evils, sea voyages to uncharted lands— we were ghost hunters and tellers of beautiful tales. 

 

Don’t misunderstand me— this isn’t a love letter. We didn’t share a kiss under the moon and fall in love never to see each other again. Well, maybe we fell in love, but not like that. Not like the books or the movies. We fell in love like the day with the night, the sun with the moon. We fell in love with the colors we painted in each others’ worlds. We fell in love with the balance, yin and yang. Two halves of a beautiful whole. We had found someone that worked perfectly, that fixed everything about ourselves we had broken. Laced it with gold and made each other glow. And we wondered how we ever survived in this world prior to knowing each other. How we hadn’t realized we were missing a piece of ourselves and we were only whole with each other.

 

That summer we were creatures of the forest. Creatures of limbs and leaves. Living among the trees, we danced in the grass and ran in the creeks, escaping to the sky. We reached out until the sun shone on our faces while clouds tickled our arms and the stars seemed to linger at the tips of our fingers. Twigs became antlers and swords and wands, and the magic we shared filled the forest, twinkling in our eyes and shining in our smiles. The trees watched over us, reverent guardians of grand forest secrets who bestow upon us the honor of their language, deep and ancient within our souls. Him, me and the trees. 

 

We set fire to our souls and watched the sparks drift up, past our eyes, up and up through the leaves, sifting their way through the giants looking after us, up and up and up until you couldn’t tell them from the stars above. Until our souls exploded into stardust and magic.

 

We ran through the fields and howled at the moon. We danced with fairies and hunted ghosts. We leapt through sunbeams and flew with fireflies, feeling their lights blink in time with our hearts. We basked in the light of sunrise, drinking in the fiery colors and burning air, watching the midnight ink eat it away until all that remained was us, two specks in an infinite galaxy. Forever intertwined.   

 

That summer, we were wild. 

Untouchable, untamable, unforgettable. 

 

We were fifteen and free.