Your days are your sonnets

This is the last night you will ever be young,
she said
as you barrelled headfirst after buses,
slipping through streets with your hands fisted in the fabric
of your top where it fell, buttons through worn holes,
and you trailed smoke and scarves and laughed at mirrors and tasted,
for the last time,
like someone you'd never really met,
and this was it this was
the ever-unfolding night
it was something bright and shameful and beautiful and you felt it,
running faster, as you slipped and skidded and swung
arms out
round lamp posts, free-wheeling circles and shapeless noise
this happiness, trailing after you like
scarves or smoke or messages on mirrors saying:
this is it, this is
everything that you will ever have to look back on
the last night you will laugh with your arms wide and your eyes open
and not feel ashamed.
This is the last night you will ever be young.
And you will fall through cities when they're fever-bright
and lie barefoot in the sun
that shines into your locked room
and you will dance to music you do not remember
because this is it, this is all, this is the end
of the beginning.

But you're running
and screaming
your final secrets
so you do not hear her,
but race on, happy, through the night.