re-post, updated

Come, Summer

it’s like finding a picture
of your mother in her wedding gown.
you want to be there,
 but you don’t want to be
 a bastard.

it’s like concealing the congeal of blood
behind your teeth. your mouth becoming
tough and inhuman as iron, your gums
sick with the sweetness of your own body,
and feeling it knot in your throat
  before swallowing.

it’s like hearing the shrill and distant
why of an ambulance siren,
or the whistle of the train,
asking simply who
  before it leaves,
  and continues to move along
  steadily.

  but mostly it’s like you being you
  under the dandelion yellow light bulb
  of the diner booth,
  glancing up from slate black coffee,
  your eyelashes, gentle
  as the trigger hairs of
  a Venus flytrap,
  and me being me
  across the table,
flat, cold,
unmoving,
stone.