Andrés

18

this is about you,
and it also isn’t.

i bake away
in the sunnied summer
smilebound balloonboy
salad days daydreaming
dazing and confusing and forgetting
the sizzle of my flesh
against -- sweet rough what ! --
the cold of yours.

so odd,
where my memory runs too of late.
in the summer
in the baking
sunbathing animal, another
vagabonding member
of the misremembering flock.
i need little of your cold
now.

one creature i return to, one habit i neglect
i cannot slow the pace at which i yearn
at which i learn
and relearn and
teach outward and
relearn again

(i fell in love with you
like the earth is in love with the sun)

i cannot return to
your cold, i cannot,
cannot --

(we know without them
we would be cold and deoxygenated,
but we both know not to get too close
for fear of terrible burns)

my body
frails
at the whiff
of February,
cough syrup stomach achings
and stale brioch chocolate.
choking back tears,
the sun,
you
screams through
my window paine
in one last gush of feverish emotion
– quiet.

fall comes now
sneaking between my
sock naked feets.
fear.
i am afraid i may stumble about central park
in the grass swallowing dirt and
crocket-dreaming Courts
until January freezes me
all up
to the morgue-freezer-unit life
i vaguely remember.

if this is your doing,
i cannot take any more
lashes to my already
mountain terrain back.
the blood
so red
so red
so
stop stop stop stop
-- oh, Paradise ! —
holdmeinyourfire