She lands,
leaving only dampened hands--
Evidence of her stay

Spending her most memorable time
urging a  barefooted girl to rip off
the itchy black dress stained
with sweat and graveyard soil.

Such a sour cliché
introducing me to
June, my only
heartbreak.

Tomato plants bent in half
weighted with ripened fruit,
swollen large enough to
split its skin,
steaming in the overgrown garden.
She laughs like warm rain at the way the fruit
and I hang--

suspended. Growing heavier
in the humid heat of yet
another smeared dusk.
Eerie breezes slide through the leaves,
my messy hair collecting her
featherweight secrets--

bringing still faced realizations that
it's easier to hear June whisper
"There is only one thing you can be sure of,"
than to empty the shallow oxygen stream
from my tributary mouth
back into her swallowing sea.

Tides rolling in and rolling out.
"Only one thing to which everyone agrees."

The thing about June is,
you can’t decline the annual walk.
The thing she’s hiding is
a tall ledge in a pink haze
through a field of wild strawberries.
Letting me fall with silent excuses,
I am too heavy, and she
too light--

*"The thing is, everyone will die."