At Odds & Loose Ends: A poetry Collection

Summer's Deathbed

She gathered my hand and paraded me

across hills and over would-be trees

She told me if I didn't amble, barefooted

through mud and cockleburs that I would

miss out on extraordinary things

She braided my nerves and wailed

that if I didn't take my medication or

cure my swimmers itch, or rub aloe

on my sunburns that I would grieve them

Her heat strangled me every time she smiled

She lamented with honeycomb eyes that if I

didn't scrape my knees and buy an umbrella,

that every thunderstorm would haunt me;

insisted that squealing night bugs and

skittering spiders were her greatest works

She begged me to praise them.

I tinted my windows, cut my hair,

and shielded my eyes. I didn't overhear the

Cicadas die, nor did I recognize the

the trees, dozing in their beds.

It was evening, then, when I discovered

her, courting sleep too early

She sighed at me and turned

from my prying

"Maybe next year," she offered.

A disarming smile broke from her, and all the

reedy hope that clung to her lashes tumbled.

I blinked at her, and it was winter again. 

[Originally published in Red Weather Literary Magazine 2020]