A Night in the Overlap by Maple Fae

We walk through the warm night to a quiet lake.

The water withdrawn, like a blanket

that’s been pulled back. A silver sheet of sand

is all that covers the lakebed.

Seizing the evening, we step softly, hand in hand,

onto the momentary beach.Our bare skin glistens

in the light of the full moon. Almost as bright

as the pebbles and shells that shine pearlescent

in the powder around our feet.

We use damp driftwood as wands

to spell out letters in the sand. Love letters,

addressed to who we could have been if we didn’t

choose to leave our shared histories behind.

You remark that elephants shake sticks at the moon.

So we do too! We shake our driftwood wands

at the spotlight in the sky.

Soon, the shake moves down our arms, bodies, and hips;

and we are dancing topless to the sounds of crickets

on the moonlit stage for all the night to see.

Growing tired and weary, we lay our wands down

and use the lakeside trees to guide our drowsy bodies

back to the comfort of our own beds.

To sleep until the rising sun jolts us awake

and we run to the lakeside to see the silver beach

has gone. Along with the love letters,

and the wands that wrote them.

Washed away by the returning tide.

Maple Scoresby (she/her) is a hot piece of ass who tends to deposit her paychecks into the local claw machines instead of the bank. Her poetry tackles topics like gender identity, double standards, and pizza sauce. In her spare time, Maple likes to cry about how terrible she is at Street Fighter while drinking an obscene amount of eggnog.