Fairies

Mid-Summer at the station and the air is full of fairies.

Cotton-fluff, you tell me and sweep one arm towards the trees, as if those rippling shadows and foaming leaves could explain anything clearly. I turn back slowly, through the soft.

The afternoon hugs us, closer than our skin. The sky melts into your face and I smell the grey sludge of my old sun-screen, and cooking metal, from the fence ribs and the tracks.

Fairies, I insist.

And though you join me, you remain begrudging, at first.

Except there are so many, it's dizzying, giggling. Irrisistible. And they're easy to catch. Wilting to white spiders in our hands.

Soon we're both leaping and laughing, wishing relentlessly. Clapping each time we flick them free. You're with me now, completely -

After all, there's a lot to wish for. A blizzard of dreams burn bright between my sticky lashes. There's hope in your high-pitched, hitching breath.

The train's not here yet, but the air thrums. Secrets spiral, rising, blurring with the whir of a swallow's wing.