Roseglow
Jesse Rice-Evans
Summer isn't long as it used to be
- Frank Ocean
If every breath is a new beginning, I am tired, sun plummeting into fist of indigo
The places you used to take me shake dust, astroturf landing crumbling freckles of plas-
tic, your sneakers lipped with glitter raining from demolition aftercare.
You work through your worst night, an icon of unreadable past lives, new names cresting
your clothes, new self-smell, sheen of freshly-waxed drop train, a sleek skin to peel or
sport
All my life, an echo, an unknowable gulf of connective tissue, the disease I was promised
and didn't get
Who knew how weird I were, I dreamt of weird but wasn't it, wasn't drenched the way
I should have been, the way I thrum medicated, your hands sweating into my clothes,
unseasonable linens, the skirt you can see right through, my knees scalding, the moment
I learn to write again, words are clean splashed across subway tile in every station, the
stop and start of my scraped brain, a tremor, a tumor, not a tumor, a trembling unforgiv-
able.
It's pretty sweet when you think: I can get free air above ground, my body carries it
through tunnels and the slow crawl of my body in the tubes, a virtual in-front-of-you-
ness, a former visibility that stops mattering when it devastates my throat
I can cut through any quiet, any hole you sought solace in is now mine because I am
ruthless. If you wanted a sad, you're looking wrong, looking okay doing it in sleeveless
black tee, a sleek look, droplets speckling from your drenched head, dry sweater below
Less sorrow, more sharp, shaping sharpness is a hobby, a round thing desperate to get
sleek, edged, softness closing in to become hard, my hair tumbling into the stained toilet
bowl, rainbow of copper left over from summer; this purge marks the end of something,
a new edge to peruse or embody or something
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Cauldron Anthology