Color War

Color War

At the end of camp

Our counselors bussed us out

To a field by the highway

To play capture the flag

We painted our faces our team color

My cheeks and nose bloody with red paint

Running unrestricted through knee-high grass

Ankles ravaged by mosquitos

Handkerchiefs tied over our foreheads

We screamed hoarsely at each other

Whispered business-like our strategies

Words hot on each other’s necks

It seemed like endless dusk

The sun never beat down on us

The first splash of fireflies lit up the grass

Looking around I saw nothing

But field and wood and children

They had set us down in another world

And we would readily have disappeared there

Never gone home to our families

Left hollows in the beds of our rooms

Our happiness

unrivaled

We sang our team song

After we secured the last flag

Our roughened feet stomping

on the metal bleachers

Deep into night

In the morning

We wandered out from the woods

Into a patch of yellow flowers and dusty ground

Scuffed our shoes across railroad ties

Our bus looked like an alien aircraft to me

Huffing smoke out of its exhaust

I ran my hand down my dirt-streaked arm

The skin and muscle, the bone

Was all still there

I could not believe it

I never went back to camp after that first summer

In the hard polishing of adulthood

I have rubbed off most of that magic

That golden tinge of almost crossing a line

Only occasionally

A memory will rage up inside of me

Push its fists up through my heart

Like a skinny kid leaping
into the air