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.