“Trade Forever”

“Trade Forever”

The day leans gold across the cooling lawn,

and every window catches fire

like the last frame of a music video you never wanted to end.

You are the light that refuses to hurry down

and I want to keep you here,

just like this,

before anything has a chance to change.

Forever young.

That’s the wish, isn’t it?

Not that the night goes on,

but that we do

that we stay exactly as we are tonight,

warm and unhurried

and impossibly alive.

Because the song knows what we know:

that the gold is already fading even as we hold it.

That’s what makes it soar.

We sing forever young the loudest precisely

because we can feel how fast it goes

the sunset already sinking,

the chorus already climbing toward its last note.

So let the sun stay where it is a moment longer.

Let the synth swell and the sky go amber

and your face stay lit like this.

I know I can’t keep it.

Nothing gold can stay.

No one stays young,

and no one gets to choose the hour that the light begins to lose.

But God, tonight…with you beside me,

certain as the stars,

the whole sky burning slow and ours,

all ours

I’d trade forever for this one last view:

the golden hour holding.

Me and you.