We Are Still Growing

Summer Gothic

It's late summer.
The air hangs around your throat,
you breathe in,
but your lungs fill with dust
all the water you drink will not clear your throat
the perfume of too many flowers chokes you
and there are no nights you do not cry.

You haven't slept in a week.

Juice drips from your skin like blood.
You reach out, break the surface of the water,
chlorine, salt, freezing cold,
and you can't tell if what you're breathing is air anymore.

Cool green grass caresses your skin.
She offers you a daisy chain and you laugh;
it dies within half an hour.
Your emotions feel fake, and you don't know
how to stop them.
They're too much; you hide them at the bottom of the hole you dug at the beach when you were 10 and you wanted to touch the centre of the earth.

You thought it was gold; you wonder if anyone filled it in,
or if it's still there,
like a grave you never knew how to fill.
The grass is freshly mown -

it always is - even though
no one ever mows it.
There's the constant hum in the distance,
the city never sleeps, and you're alone all the time.

Everyone you hate touches you.
They're warm and sweaty, the heat is cloying.
You want to feel the cool linen of her arms around you;
she shrugs you off.

You read a book in the sun. You pretend you like it.
You get a sunburn and wonder if it means you'll die
before you're 30.
You wonder if you'll ever see the end of summer,
or if your eyes will glaze over as you stare at the sky
the only shade of blue you could never find a name for.