It almost feels like summer,
breeze at the dusk, killing mosquitoes.
It feels like
Taking a stroll on National Mall,
On a summer night in front of Lincoln Memorial.
Playing Frisbee riding bike
On the meadow in front of the Capitol.

My summer in the capital
With you, him and her and them and myself alone

It feels like the humidity in the swamp, with jazz playing in the background
It smells like crab cake and french toast, out from the diners I frequent
It looks like the summer sky, cloudless, your eyes

The meadow the ducks, summer dress and birkenstock.
Brunch, breeze and bike, followed by more bike rides along the riverfront.

Sitting on the marble stairs of the Supreme Court
Dipping toes in Reflection Pool

Summer in D.C. oh how I much do I miss you and adore
Summer is a state of mind and so does love
But you never fail to give me the feelings of those above.xxoo

Like drinking water out of mason jars
Like reading through fake plastic glass
Like dressing in your grandparents bolts of fabric
Like holding an unfiltered cigarette
Or even better a wooden pipe…
Smoke swelling in closed mouths
And nostrils blowing in sailboat clouds
Down to the next not- Starbucks
To sit on a velvet couch with
Coral painted nails and a chai in hand...
You all can be like this.
With no workout clothes and
With at least two piercings in your nose
You all are like this soon enough.
Who gave you the idea to pick up the
Ukulele anyway?
Who gave you the idea to shave one quarter
Of your head?

We all did. We all are a
Fleet of individual sameness,
A want to stand out from the
Cookie- cutter looks,
But now we’re all cupcakes
With the same story but with
Different hooks
For hands, snagging the rest
Of us along.
With your identical twin lipstick
And Birkenstock feet.
The lack of shock we absorb
Gets lonely and depressing.
So lets all move to Montreal
And French kiss and knit
And maybe real soon the
Croissants will go stale
And it’ll be cool to live
In Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

I still long for a lot of things from you.
Like the smell of your room when you're peacefully dreaming.
Like the heavy beats in my chest when I'm about to kiss your neck while I'm spooning you.
Like the debate in my mind whether you'd like it or you'll like it a lot.

Oh pray that the summer could be more forgiving.
So we could run up to the hills
Lie under trees, tired from carving our names on their helpless barks
Watch the gaps between leaves and the sunlight piercing through
Draw scriptures on your skin.
Your blank page of a skin.
Always ready for a masterpiece.
Already, in itself, (if I may correct myself) a masterpiece.

I still long for the moment
After your sweating forehead gives way to your radiance.
After your legs stop working from hiking grounds of brown and green.
Icky damp, cracking dry.

I still long to see you
Playing on the river
Skipping stones
Soaking your heels.

Shaking off sand
Stuck in your Birkenstock.
Collecting stones you find fancy.
Writing our names on the sand.

Lean your head against my shoulder
Tired from all your adventure
Selfishly keeping each monumental seconds
Safely in our private album.

I still long to long for you.
Through summers,
Through seasons.

the red glow, gentle, not as vertiginous as the air,
is saved only by its ethereal nature
from being swept up into the churning night.

it is this same nature that condemns it to
suffuse into the blooming blue lambency-
which is now green. and now peach.

even feigning surprise becomes impossible
in this place of transmutation
when examined by the soul

those with physical forms are not spared either
but some are more mutable than others:

peach juice, for example, ripens with glycerol, and relinquishes
its color when it diffuses into wine
which holds its color, no matter the light
and will seep through fabric, when conditions are right
like every other form of nectar here

so be free of it, drop it all on the ground
making little mounds of cloth, little
mole-hills in the dark

which blend less, but
black-and-white houndstooth
perfectly matches a brown
Birkenstock (or bag) in our own
personal heaven.