smeared black ink on sweaty palms
i sort of got lost inside the summer’s tongue. it kept tasting freedom, distance dissolved in all the heat that boiled me fever dreams of you. i had a heart already sewn on top of mine and you saw me like a lighthouse, washing over you time to time in two a.m. excuses to touch you a little longer. if only you had waited for me to unveil my hand of cards, all bloodied hearts. if only you had been my ace up the sleeve, cradled like secret. i would have kissed you when no one looked, oh skinny love of the summer’s tell-tales and polarity squalling in the tempests of love’s sovereign hands. i would have been everything if you looked a little harder. i told you secrets, i told you to be kind, i told you to be patient because i knew that the northern voices that sung my heart to sleep would soon stop their songs. i always am one to wait for something to go right. and now sometimes i see you and you will smile innocent as spring blossoms and you will look more beautiful than i ever remembered and i will wish i had blown myself to smithereens so that maybe you would see my smoke as something more than chimney lungs looking for god in all the wrong places.
just last the year, just remember me like i am remembering you through all the empty glasses and all the sweeping passes my arm made along yours, staying stiff. i could never quite get through. i could never dig deep enough to find the gold i see humbled hiding inside you, sprinkling light across the eyes of anyone who tries to look hard enough. i have been looking hard enough ever since summer skies painted you beautiful on a canvas composed of your blushing cheeks and my ever-growing desire to keep you glowing. even through the winter, when i hardly saw your petals parading, you glowed like summer.
