<!– Content not displayed in gallery view –>

we kissed and sparks set us glowing, our limbs live wires— unpredictable, electric. we burned like July suns, blazed like August campfires, heartstrings tendriling like smoke, fingerprints branded to thighs like hot iron. we were humid dusks, all firefly bodied, voltaic heat lightning. all this time i thought this was an endless summer when really, it was a burning.

bring me June daisies and July heatwaves. let cold water be something for skin to sizzle under instead of shiver at. send sun to summer my skin, moon to coat my throat in howls—guttural, thick, and hungry for blood. send fireflies to catch in blue-tinted mason jars —let’s pretend they’re stars scooped from the heavens. let’s pretend this barren soil, this decayed wasteland is capable of reaping something ripe and sweet, sticky on the fingers. let’s make a picnic of these canned beans and jarred peaches. let’s make a seaside of this whimpering creek. let’s make use of this dying sun while we still can. let’s meet, flesh to flesh, ankle to ankle, honey tongue to strawberry lips. let’s make a timeless August of it.

June is a blossoming, a testing of freshly wringed wings. July is cottonwood ethereal one minute, thunderstorm electric the next. Things get hazy in August, s   l    o     w like dripping honey. August is a lazy crawl to the end of things, the weight of things, the last gasp of summer air before Earth begins her next trick: falling apart to come back together. August is dewed grass, hydrangeas in heady collapse, respite from rain, a final bloom, monarchs releasing and spreading their tigered wings to the south. August is willow tree wisdom, an understanding of endings and youth, cerulean blues that sprawl into pink and lavender sunsets, nostalgic dusks, then endless stars plunging through the surface of Lake Nokomis. One last trip to the seaside, one last chance for walking barefoot through the woods, splashing through the creek, a silent prayer that we’ve sown and grown and nurtured something worth reaping.!– Your poem content goes here –>

is parched ivy stitched to my ribcage. July climbs my clammy back and leaves behind evacuated shells that tug and scratch, crumble, cling, crack between fingers too eager for winter solstice. They are not wrong to mistake this skin for a graveyard. They are not wrong for wanting to hang all that weight on someone else’s shoulders. I don’t know why they’ve chosen mine: small as creek stones, fragile as bird bones. But I carry them into August, pray for an early fall.

August smells like sunscreen and ripe peaches, skin stained like regret: indigo rose, all the daisy chains we never made, friendship bracelets we forgot to bead and braid. August is nobody’s girl, volcanic heart, liminal sword of light where two curtains meet. Already she swims in grey tulle rolling in from September like coastal Maine fog. The silver lining: the mosquitos are migrating mudward for winter. We are past July. We are no longer drowning in the deep end of humidity. I am no longer a child. The maples shuffle the cards and cut the deck; lay August, like a wet sheet, out to dry.

        Where for once,        we don’t chase daylight— daylight chases us,        smears her honey hands across         our sun-starved backs                 until we glisten        like newborns plucked ripe from the womb.

I am such        a summer thing, such a bath full of brine, such a Salish Sea         siren screeching to nocturnal vessels at midnight.        O, but in daylight,        look how my lion prow sheds        salt scales         & tilts her gilded face        toward the sun.