change your mind

the same moonlight your eyes glimmer in as they catch on the blue-pink mountain expanse and fall on mine. i think your smile is like a watermelon slice and maybe that’s just because it’s summer and you can’t walk ten feet in my town without seeing fresh crisp red & green fruit.

i watch as the water comes up to your waist, up past the wildly bunched rolls of your jeans at your knee, past your pockets filled with smooth river stones we’ve collected. i see you stand there, shoes held above your head as the silvery minnows peck and nibble at your ankles. the night feels fresh and sweet, like the first bite of a peach in the summer—orange and red, like the sunset

god I wish I fell in love right away but instead i’ve been the sparrow preyed upon by the hungry falcon, the pounding terror flooding and pouring from my ears, hot, red, viscously metallic and biting like talons through soft skin & feathers.

everything is subtropical and nothing hurts except everything does, and the bruise on my neck aches as you lean on me but yet don’t trust me

we both knew he couldn’t bridge the gap between beautiful and good enough, he wanted my bones for potpourri and I did not want to be the one to cleanse his tired air.

& then on a cold january day when the soil was dry and frozen, he dug up my corpse and left it on cold concrete to die; no cracked watering can, no forced love, no gentle touch to my leaves followed by the picking sting.

your gentle hands pruned my wounds and transplanted my dying body into the earth once again, cutting out the rot and washing the infection from my roots.

you unlocked the door of his home and made it yours, filling life with bright things and the garden with fertilizer when the soil called out for it. each morning you drank your morning coffee as you fed me mine, soaking the ground with your love so that i could reach up into the world once again.

you could never fix the sprinkler system, but you brought the garden back to life.

it’s not real because the boy i chase after every june ceases to exist on july first. it’s almost like we don’t exist on the same plane, but perhaps on two strings that spin around the sun and only occasionally cross.

summer love doesn’t exist because the ocean and the sky call me away from home and no matter who i meet i will never forget the boy in seattle that my heart is bound to by the red thread of life.

it’s an idea created by tired highschoolers looking for something to focus on instead of trigonometry. everyone asks if you played the baseball game of summer love, and people are especially wondering exactly how you played.