summer

is it

raining again this summer?

outside the window, the same view I revisit so unhappily,

there are raindrops again against the heat, beginning to blister,

lingering on the rusty chairs, the dead plants;

kaleidoscopic in the broken fountain.

I, in my dirty walls, wait for it:

sometimes, there is thunder;

sometimes, there is lightning.

the rain is not enough, not like the blizzards,

the howling snow and unfathomable cold,

as I’m licking at stinging fingertips and staring at the grey-soaked sky.

but it reminds me that there is water, there are soothing things:

there are tide pools that I curl my body into, warm like bathwater,

like a womb.

there are waves that leave me somersaulting.

I lie still in the tidepools, lapped by the sweet salt, and think of maelstroms,

a sucking into the depths.

the rain smells of decay as much as life, of rotten fecundity,

it drips off leaves and filth, off the dead things, festering,

sky turned skeletal-white.

it is raining again this summer, the plants are drinking it in,

exploding, the flowers like art;

I only see the dead things, the incandescent rot:

the golden rust, the wet dirt,

the water glittering in the fountain, in the mold.