"Junebird!" she grinned, right on cue. I felt my heart fracture into a kaleidoscope of hues.
Beads of sweat clung to her collarbones like a necklace of pearls. Her heat radiated off of her, even though the night had cooled the air into a tolerable warmth.
I kissed her.
I kissed her and held her until she was trembling against me, and even then I did not let go.
Behind us, the window had gone empty and dark.
We could have become anything or anyone, done anything and everything that we could ever dream of.
Instead, we chose ourselves. I chose her.
We were birds with honey mouths and wings of leaves, and we would not be frightened away so easily.
We would claim the garden as ours, we would throw our shoes over the fence and dance and twirl figure-eights into the dirt. From inside the house, a statue of ice would look on, slowly thawing away in the summer heat.
