A summertime moon that served as a muse. / Photographer: Ellie Wright
Bursting
The ocean is three feet from my door
My soles nudge at the outside ground
The sun has descended, left the sky with a gaping hole
And I find that all my words are becoming hyperboles
The first gulp of summer air
Pushes and inflates my chest
All the lines are blurred, and all the rules are broken
All my words are at once spoken
Freedom – Light – Joy
Tumbling through late spring air, landing in the pool
Sitting on my windowsill, breaking hollow rules
Backpacks lined with linen sheets, warm midnight rains
The day that I really found the meaning of my name
I’ve swallowed the sun
Light is filling up my belly
My insides are burning
The color of pennies
The moon is a woman and I really like the cold
I pushed my feet into the ocean and let my arms unfold
Speeding on our bikes, tree branches brush across my face
After hours, in the backyard, sing the chorus, play the bass
I’ve swallowed the sun
Light is filling up my belly
The world tugs on my hand
And I think that’s pretty funny
I feel every inch of earth, can’t remember feeling numb
Sidewalk cracks filled with creeping vines, dandelions, and gum
Screaming on the roof with you, summer is coming
Everything is beautiful when everything is something
These poems come from a memory of summer. Fragments I scrawled on fast food napkins and in the margins of notebooks. Now, as summer has waned into fall, and fall surely trudges on, I bring together the pieces to create a recollection of the freedom and the joy of that time. It bears an ever so slightly disjointed form, but memories often do. I hope this prose can bring you the feeling of sun in your gut and water washing over your feet. Keep summer in your minds, even in these ever darkening, ever shortening days.