Summer, and the sky outside stained with an unripe green smear.
Did I ever tell you how slippery the air tastes my bare arms?
how my freckled limbs rest on heat-fragrant cotton?
how the cotton is printed clean blue and white?

How the squamous leaves of a swaying cherry tree
lolling outside my window
flicker and nod in the cool,
the twilight a swatch of thick blotting-paper
that soaks up the ink of solid night objects?
the slummocky roofs, the frowsy chimneys
and nail-torn tree silhouettes...

Summer, summer...
Did I ever tell you this was how I wanted to be touched?
Do you see?
The way the night touches me.
And this is all I ever wanted to hear:
the unselfconscious hiss, the sussurous fizz,
inside a frosted glass.

Summer,
and the sweet apple-smoke stink of come-hither has tinged my armpits.
Did I ever tell you how the glass of soda beside an old
apricot lamp
sisses like a deliciously lisping gossip,
the glass fogged by opaque humps and clumps of ice,
the spit-bubbles clinging to the sides separate as frog-spawn,
the moonstones of moisture on the outside sliding diagonally,
lazily,
mesmerizingly.
And the clunk-clunk of the fused cubes soothing as I sip with suspense
the cold wetness
down a blushed and backwards-bared throat?