Summer ’17, Minneapolis

a memory of teenage summers (in iambic pentameter).

Remembering the smell of chlorine burns

my eyes, a backyard pool-like blue, in summer.

Air with suffocating humidity

the only time of year that I can breathe.

A time when cracks in streets age backwardly,

by counter-clockwise hands dusted in concrete.

Those peonies wound up tightly, bulbs reborn;

a season where every beating thing is alive.

When winter comes, new cracks form in pavement.

You know, water expands when it turns ice.

I think maybe that’s why I grew so much,

when we froze over too. Eyelashes frosted,

cold hands, warm eyes. Summer falls apart.

Each season cyclical, a reminder of things

that once flourished but now hibernate

and make me wonder when like peonies, they’ll

be born once more. I am wound tightly waiting.