the summer's burn
The sun, mad with lust, reaches out in this hot midday, touching my shoulders with a burning kiss
Worming inside me, hot and scalding. I shift in my tank top, lifting my head
My evaporating blue eyes, up to the sky.
I mouth thank you. I have missed her, the sun.
She smiles back, and I bask, oh I bask, I have left my pain behind me.
But the smell of flesh drifts up towards my nose, tomato- red and aching,
Screaming, pulling my skin off in charred, blackened chunks.
You’ve forgotten me, the winter sings,
You’ve forgotten me, and now you will pay.
When I pull on my father’s green jacket, half dead from the cold
Her blush still peels on my nose.
Flakey and white and yes, it is right,
I have forgotten.
The sun goes down, after all.
The winter is here now, he is a dark lover,
He has no time for such things.
And I am tired, not in the warm sleepy way,
But bone-tired, sluggish, biting.
When I come home, his things are on the counter, I must put them up.
His slippers step on my ankles, he makes the bed
frigid. He is, I think, my worst enemy.
I miss you, sun, I miss your kisses, abrasive as they were,
His leave me
unsatisfied.