06/05/2021-06/18/2021
In the thick of the second summer,
The smell of rain hangs high in the air, close to the clouds next to my open window. The fever of a thunderstorm beyond holds my face in its heart-shaped palms.
Mist hangs low in the valley that holds the lake in cupped hands. I have never seen it mist like it does here.
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The second summer runs its fingers through my damp hair, as if telling me a promise. The cycle of mist and clouds runs and repeats as the night grows deeper.
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A memory from a very long time ago—
My shins pressed into the wet grass, stars above.
The Dippers, Cassiopeia faint in my mind.
A book of stars sits on a shelf of my desk.
In the morning, my white t-shirt, grass-stained, on my floor.
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I am sitting on the floor with my back against the wall, looking up at you. I reach my hand out. You take what is in it, we touch for a second, and you keep moving.
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The second summer is a hundred degrees hot, sticky on my face and the backs of my knees. When I open my door with you close behind me, holding my life in your hands, I see the blood-gold sun streaming through my window from all angles like a flare, coating all four walls of my room in a bright, thick syrup. The still, hot air holds the sticky smell of sugar from ripe fruit. Groceries that need to be put away lie helter-skelter on my floor: peaches, strawberries, cilantro, granola, peanut butter, bananas, limes, peppers. My dirty shoes are untied. Fresh bug bites cover my shins. Every strand of my hair is a flyaway, caught in the humidity. Behind me,
pink carnations sit in a glass jar on my windowsill, watching, knowing. Your silhouette stays on my closet doors.
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A song of the second summer, you play the piano on my back.
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Four hours away and over twelve hours earlier, my friend drove to New York City to see someone who loves her. She kisses him when I kiss you.
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For the length of the days that follow, I wish to tell you, softly,
Come here.
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Alone now, I lay on my back in bed and listen to the cars outside. Gold lights of the city glimmer through the trees. My eyes search the dark.
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The humidity of the second summer breaks. The spaces between the trees fill with mist, and it pours and pours. The earth cools. The forest across from my room looks like a jungle, the sun shines like a halo above the horizon, lightning strikes a pink cloud in the sky. The rain falling straight down on the rooftop seems to be demanding attention, while inside, your fingers drum the surface of my skin, quieter, closer, slower than the rain. My head switches between the lethargy of your fingers on my back and the urgency of the rain,
Your fingers and the rain.
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I see you for an incomplete second, outside my door, half of your face looking through the frame. The moment flutters like a small bird, and then it is gone.
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In a dream, I am sitting on the floor with my back against the wall, eating strawberries, looking up at you. I hand you one. You take it, and you look at me.
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In the middle of a night of the second summer, the air moves. Our clothes cover the floor and the moonlight covers our clothes.
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If you ever come out with me at 7:00 on an evening of the second summer, I will show you the secrets I see every night: daisies congregating in expanses of Indian grass, honeysuckle bushes growing tall, bird calls, breeze blowing in the direction of the sunset, replacing the humidity.
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The breeze blows away another day of the second summer. The sun sets behind a building. A claw scratch moon hangs in the quiet sky.
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The second summer
Left as it came— raining down
From tall thunderheads
Collecting as mist in the bowl of my memory, held by cupped hands.