Favorite Fridays

Today's outside author is a friend of mine who very recently got into poetry, but obviously has a serious knack for it. It was hard to choose which poem to post, so you might be seeing more of his work in the future!

BY: ELIJAH MCLAUGHLIN

Summer
You and I are like
Contrasting colors on opposite sides
Of a Popsicle stick
You
Are the strawberry Rocket Red
So sweet, everyone's favorite
The side saved for last so there's time to truly savor it
And I
Am the bizarre bombastic blue
That they always claim is Raspberry but you
Know that color doesn't exist anywhere in Nature
With a flavor that's more accurately described as "loud"
Than savory
And when we meet our demise
At the hands of the blistering heat of this Americana Sunrise
I wanna melt together
Bleed in rivulets and run all over the fingers of our combined childlike nature
Intermingle in a puddle of Nuclear-Waste purple and stain everything a shade
My mother won't approve of
Love
Is a saccharine mess
That tastes best when the colors clash
It is the heat rebounding off the dash
In the car left parked
While a couple of teenagers wander off into the woods together
It is the dirt rising off the backroad
you drive down just to be alone
Just the two of you
It's the abandoned fence overrun with rust
With a gap in it just big enough to fit through
It's that secret spot at the top of the small mountain
Overlooking the whole town
That spot you found
Where the sun crowns the sky in golden light
At the dawn of every day
That spot with the most impressive view of backwoods paradise ever captured
That feeling of rapture
When two opposite ends of the stick sit and watch the Americana Sunrise
And quietly melt together