“Senior Formal (prom)”
The shoes still shine with laughter,
sequins scatter like echoes across the floor.
Every dance step pressed into the night
as if the world itself tilted closer,
to listen to joy stitched into fabric.
Yet under the belt of years,
no vacant holders wait
for childhood’s tokens—
the belt is already crowded,
a museum of contrasts:
games never played,
but triumphs carried in silence,
a wishlist of absences
turned into weight.
So, the child returns,
carrying a night swollen with music,
a ballroom of memory, where sweetness
lingers in the air, bubbly tickles into breath.
The tension is not between loss and gain,
but between what still remains
and what insists on becoming.
.