dandelion wine

june is communion. june is mixing turmeric and charcoal into pink lemonade and drinking it very fast, faster than our mothers would advise. june is feeling the spices assault the stomach lining and running outside in the middle of the night to cough up an apology onto the asphalt. and your hands are clean, because the sea salt and the bleach  and the chlorine scrubbed all the dead stuff off, so you leave the apology in the street to rot in the midnight sun. june is hair bows and hair braids and daisy chains. june is sitting on pavement, on curbs, under streetlights, anywhere there’s a piece of land and a place to be. the concrete speaks in whispers in the nighttime; sometimes when its dark the moon tells you secrets like “run” and “hide.” she shoves mothballs into your ears when the boy next door drives by, all fast and loud and alive. and you ask her why but the cotton snakes up through your mouth and makes everything sound like a soft plead. you make lemonade and this time it’s all yellow, all crimson and sunny and raw. there is no eclipse tonight. the boy next door comes over and you drink spiced juice together and he tells you secrets too, but these ones are for your ears only. the summer solstice comes but you forget to watch. everything is yellow. july doesn’t come. july falls. he lands in your lap in the form of a ripened apricot oozing warm orange goo. july is orange. july is Tropicana and split lips and peppermint chapstick. the night rolls in thick like broth and I open my window to drink some in. the boy next door drives faster now, but never in the day.  the legs under you turn to strawberry jello and you ask your mother why blood clots so quickly. you ask your mother why hands always tremble in the heat, why everything always trembles in the heat. through the open window comes the thick air and the boy and the summertime sounds. a monster lives down the street and you danced together once but he never called because you never gave him your phone number. isn’t there some poetry in that. there are no nights here, only milky daytime. august comes in the middle of the night. august sticks to the roof of your mouth until you have a chance to run to the bathroom and shove your fingers down your throat. now it lives on the bathroom floor. the moon returns but night is never long enough to feed your crumbling body. august is scooping the apology off the asphalt and shoving it back into your mouth. the edges are burned but the middle is mushy and raw. you taste everything. the boy next door visits when he gets too cold, and you let him use your skin like a blanket. there are no secrets this time. he shuts the window, too. the summertime sounds are gone anyways; the monster down the street got evicted. august is wrapping a noose around a virgin neck just for the thrill of it, just to see if you could get away with the crime. the braid snaps and the rope breaks and the next door neighbors watch you very closely but when you look into their eyes everything is glassy. the lemonade rots in your bedroom closet so one night you open it and drink everything. there is no spitting up this time. nothing dead will lay in the street come morning so you ask the moon for a favor. you pull the mothballs out of your chest and offer them back to her. she wanes and sighs and the last bumblebee takes its final breath. the daisy chains are long gone. you find the first autumn apple and shove it in your mouth, waiting for it to rot with you in the sun.