The world has turned many times since camp ended,
and the raindrops on my shoes, long dried to oblivion—

I press my tongue against the roof of my mouth
chewing your few kisses I’ve hid,
a little nervous,
as if they could dissolve still

How easily life loosens itself into memory…
How time strips away its muscles,
until all that remains is the bone of it,
brittle
something I once carried inside my mouth,
but have now forgotten how to pronounce.

Into the deep belly of a hollow tree, I would burrow
if it meant I could fall out, and fall into your arms again

just once—
If it meant we could sit again, cross-legged
play, and pull words apart, piece them back together
into the language of Then

but the vowels have unfastened
fallen noiselessly somewhere in Balaton.

and what did you even whisper to me,
once upon a kétszemélyes tábor?

I only remember how you laughed into my collarbone,
skin thin enough to absorb you