I ran with children today.
Around and around like a merry go round and time slowed down.
Adjacent to the track is a school garden and young girls run around with butterfly nets visually weaving through the sunflower stalks.
A girl yells through the fence, “he says he likes you!”
I, a bystander, witness the little brunette look down pretending to admire the flowers with a suppressed smile and a look that passes the objects in between the thought.
Ah yes, I know that one.
That feeling when you pretend like you didn’t hear and look at something else, but the words “he likes you” echoes through the head and that night will be a happy one at home.
No one notices,
Except for me who is no longer a child, but watching her is nostalgia and so I remember the familiarity of the head bowed down with an uncontrollable upward lift of the lips.
The warm flutters in the belly,
And the feeling of being loved,
Though it may be decades before she accepts it openly.
musingnude 