Aubergine at Dusk

Lace and yearning...

The field was already surrendering to evening
when she pushed him, laughing, into the grass,
his white shirt bright, innocent, and thoroughly doomed.

Her dress gathered slowly above her thighs,
revealing aubergine lace,
dark as the final bruise of sunset.
She made that thin fabric feel like
the last impossible distance between them,
then slipped it down and stepped free.

While they forgot the waiting world,
the lace rested quietly in the grass,
holding her warmth among the cooling blades.

By darkness, his shirt had lost its buttons,
and they had both cried out into the dusky sky.

She dressed again beneath the rising moon
and bent to retrieve the aubergine fabric,
but his hand reached it first.
“Those are mine,” he said.

He folded them carefully into his pocket,
a souvenir, she teased.
“Something like that.”

Then he took her hand
and walked away carrying a piece of twilight,
proof that, once, the distance between them disappeared.

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