Now is not the time

“It looks like no one’s out here,”
he told her while she glanced around
and undid her top buttons
between smoke clouds.
The radio they brought
had bright red batteries
they bought at some convenience store
where everything cost a bit more
than it should have.
Everything she said seemed so
alive to him like picking up
a bullfrog or a lizard and then feeling it
react to how his fingers closed.

Her sunglasses were all she wore
laid out on that blanket that was torn
all over every time they used it.
He fished a while listening
to the grasshoppers hack their songs away,
and the tree bark peeling in the dryness
of the heatwave.

She rolled over on her side and showed
the corners of her dark brown eyes,
and spoke up for the second time
since they got there.
“What if we just killed them all,
and took the world for only us forever?”
She watched him closely after saying that
while he was reeling slack and focused
on the water.

It never was the perfect day
but somehow they would find
an opportunity.
A chance to make a break for it,
and watch the reasons
left to stay behind evaporate.
Their empty gun the only luster left
besides her.

“I’m fine with that,” he finally said
as she squeezed his hand,
and held it for eternity.
“But now is not the time,
and it might never be.”