June is the soft smile of your best friend as you regale them with your tall tales about how the weekend went, and their sweet giggle as you eat cheap lollies from a shady ice cream van.

June is a spinning ferris wheel at dusk, overlooking a royal blue bay scattered with olive green tents, and your little cab on the wheel that you get into over and over again.

June is the crisp notes that you spend on thin, wispy clothes in high-street stores, and the novelty sunglasses you try on in an opticians and end up buying because they're cool.

June is the flavours of a spice-infused curry, and a large spoonful of rice afterwards to soothe the burn. It is the tall cup of fizzy cherryade that tastes like it did when you were 7, but a bit different.

June is rainbow-spotting with your friends, and being yourself, and maybe for once not feeling so alone in a world that's usually so cold.

June is flying the flag of the weirdos, and jumping up and down to rock music, and flinging open your windows dramatically in time to the soundtrack of a musical. It is 80s music so loud that you can already see the noise complaint, but the complaint never comes.

June is a month of discovery and talking about nothing for hours on end. June is about hope, and a dawn for something different. June is about having a dream, and having the power to make it come true, because no matter who you are, you deserve for your dream to come true.

June is your time, but only if you let it be so. Will you stand? I will be beside you. I love you, and I'm glad you exist.

Marvelous, matchless, magical, moonlit midnight,
With a superabundance of sparkly, summery stars,
Peacefully placid, pure and prettily plummy,
Radiantly rich, rhapsody resplendent rapture!
Fragrant flowers frolic freely in your fervence,
Eye-catching and exquisite in their exuberance,
Bouncing blissfully in breezy, blooming ballet.
Inexhaustible and intoxicating and intriguing,
Dazzling and delightful, and doubtlessly dreamy

Lady’s Favor
by Michael R. Burch

May
spring
fling
her riotous petals
devil-
may-care
into the air,
ignoring the lethal
nettles
and may
May
cry gleeful-
ly Hooray!
as the abundance
settles,
till a sudden June
swoon
leave us out of tune,
torn,
when the last rose is left
inconsolably bereft,
rudely shorn
of every device but its thorn.

Keywords/Tags: lady, lady's favor, spring, petals, nettles, may, june, swoon, rose, shorn, thorn, bare, barren, leafless, bereft, naked, ****

how much longer will I wait for butterflies bursting red at the wings, fiery orange curling their tips into flames

today is long and heavy like the space before a goodbye
i watch a moss-backed turtle float on clouds above the water and I think of you,
of coiled garter snakes and soft pink sunsets, of warm lentil soup and white zinfadel and fern forests and I know,
I would not be enough for you

settled in the space between sun and moon I am two parts water, one part fire,
I am boiling hot springs set on a river deep, bubbling and breaking and gasping for air,
I am summer thunderstorm, hot rain and violent life and love without control,
I am ocean fissure, the space between, red hot lava shifting slowly like a lover beneath the sheets
I am self-contradiction, all crab-shell and shape-shifter and the answerer of my own questions,
I am crystal cave heart and loose leaf mind, waterfall eyes and moonshine smile, you cannot tame me but you cannot let me go

The wind howls louder
than a wolf to the moon.
But don't worry.
Spring is coming soon
and will stay until June.

My feet feel the cool touch of the grass as I tip toe across the lawn. These long summer nights hold such a blissful innocence about them. Even in growing up, working at a desk job, and paying all the bills, I still feel like a kid when I am surrounded by fireflies in the cool, refreshing twilight air of a Wednesday night in June.

On my checkered blanket, the wind rustles the grass around me and each blade begins to dance to a song you can hear if you are quiet enough...

Distant wind chimes ringing, the breeze rustling the branches, the cicadas chip both near and far, a frog family croaks from the creek near by. There are few moments in this world where peace can wash over someone. In this moment, on the ground, in my PJs, I, a 20 something tired warrior, shine my flashlight toward the sky above in awe so that I may add my light to the infinate chorus above.

The serene nights of summer take me back to a time much simpler. A time when our only worries were 'can we get all of our adventures done in the time before we have to go to sleep?'. A time I go back to every June, just to feel that closeness, that humanity that I so crave. We are more than this zombie-like figure that takes over our bodies each day. We are creative and imaginative. We are fun loving and kind. We are children at heart and we need to stop depriving that child of the happier things in life.




-t.s.