The wind chimes are melting,
The ponds are sweltering,
The roads run like black tea;
The flags aren't waving,
Sheets aren't sailing,
The grass looks like gold wheat.
The beaches have more bodies
Than Juno did in June;
The dogs aren't barking,
But the kids are laughing,
Their joy's not lost on me.

I should go to the banks
Of the St. Clair River,
Where the current cools
Beneath the bridges;
Read the names on the Huron freighters
Carrying coal and oil;
Eat tasty dogs and greasy fries,
The  northern breeze there never dies.

I should hover like a dragonfly,
Applaud the divers hot ******* chances,
In the dog days of their youth.

Hot breeze, 90 degrees. My shirt was soaking wet, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the sweat between my ******* or condensed beer bottle dripage falling from above. My days consisted of no work, all play. Vomiting out every ounce of fluid my body could hold once the clock struck 2AM, only to refuse the water and replenish myself with champagne in the morning. Filling myself with bubbles, hoping it’d make me more bubbly. For it was the season of the sun, of life, of vibrance- but I only seemed to be able to drag myself out from under my drunken mistake ridden sheets once night time arrived. I thrived in the darkness. It made it easier to put my tongue in places it shouldn’t have been, whether that be on a random salty neck or a burning bottle of tequila. It was the same cycle everyday, my goal to forget more than the day before. Until I didn’t remember anything anymore. I desperately wanted to find my way back to my old self, but it was left on the side of a road less traveled. A route with winding trails littered with shards of broken whisky bottles, and with every step I took more blood was drawn. But I was finally letting myself feel the pain instead of forcing its head down to drown in the overflowing liquid in my throat. Hotter than hell, late August brought a new fire to my eyes. I still don’t know how I survived the sweet, sweet summertime.

summertime,
in our yard,
cherries reddening in the big sun,
the skies have reached the peak of blueness,
bluer than last year,
when we were lying under sycamore trees
with our minds wandering around at cloud level,
blasting our favourite music and singing along to it,
that i called life,
that i call the future.

the sunburnt skin on my chest is peeling
the same skin that your fingertips grazed over
softly at 2 am's and 10 am's
i'm renewing
but i don't want to
i miss you
         i wish i wore sunscreen

Once mingled,
free-floating piano tunes
and
sun-harshed highway
could be a match.
The Light Rail
took its time on the causeway,
I am a passenger,
safely guarded from the
unapologetic summerness
like tourists from the safari park.
I am a outrageous punk,
perching onto handrails
lost in his romantic dream of an
impossible summer. Romeo and Juliet in my hand.
Vehicle garages rusting
along palm trees lined
railway.
This is Yuen Long. This is the outskirts
with gated dogs with feral barks,
this is a compromise between bungalows and nature.
Piano symphonies morphed into
eighties tunes
in the Call Me By Your Name soundtrack album,
and the eighties synths
draws the archived mystics,
out from avenues
that leads to villas similar to those I have sojourned.
And the world as I see it, it is beautiful.

Our youth is ending,
   Ginger beer and snickers bars swapped        for cheap ***** and cold laughs
                Drip drip, the bottle spills
           Drip drip our limbs spread out
    A harmony held high over our heads
We swim down stream
   Our stomachs to the sky
    All scales and notes and melodies
A song composed in an series of summers
  A song sung through the rocks, our finger     tips glow
        Stinging,
                 slipping,
                      stuttering
A stutter, a song stuck in motion
    An unspoken emotion, stays behind

I got a phone call from your mother today.
Her lips were pursed and candied, I'd say.
I couldn't see her between the borders of states,
but she told me I should let go of the blame.

She called me up to build me higher than I've felt for the longest day.
We spoke a while and dreamt on a nostalgic plane.
She told me sweetly that her memories of her daughter
involve me, too, in some way.
She lingered with each breath as if to sigh,
before she told me she used to lie awake.
Rue in her wrinkles for having turned me away.
From your funeral that long-gone but not forgotten day.

Her sighs turned to shudders and her facade of being a mother
shattered like chalky, kiln pressured Ohio Valley clay.
She sobbed through hysterics and left me feeling desperate
of feeling a similar love for the ghost I'll leave behind
with a note lengthened in a shakily scrawled essay.

It was pure and powerful to hear the shake.
In her voice as it pronounced my three syllable name.
Hoping she got my number right,
not knowing there's a reason I've not cared to change.
Today I got the answer to a question I never thought to say.
Speaking is important to lighten how the emotions weigh.
She told me I should let go of the blame.

But you knew me best, better than they.
I can't quit the blame.
But I can lie to her for her own sake.
So she can move on and feel less of the dismay.
No parent should ever outlive their own flesh given.
The sound of her voice like a subdued painful frisson.
I told her a lie to keep her spirits intact.
To keep alive a promise whose corners are bent, but without crack.
I know you'd let me out of any dotted line I signed if I wanted
free of your Faustian contract,
But I digress,
I'm a mess.
Full of shame for how I handled you and your name.
I've written and talked about you like you were an old flame.
I tried moving on,
but all the old noises I hear them new, and all the same.
Your ghost has followed me because I asked, and you came.

I love you,
I miss you.
I'll come play with you in space.