august

days drenched in fog, grass slick with dew

a scrunched nose, eyes, 

hands, fists, 

and sweat so sweet you’ll wish you'd bottled it

raw bloody knees and fresh mosquito bites 

orange juice thick with pulp,

damp hands and peach fuzz and a dry, white sun, 

and oh god

the air smells different today; this week; this year

it’ll smell different tomorrow again, and the next day

different again, and again and again and

again.

clumsy and slow under the new sun,

you close your eyes,

feeling it slice through the sky like a hot knife through butter.

on this day,

this yawning laze of a day,

this sleepy, bumbling, mess of a day

this caked-in-sleep, rapidly-fading-dream of a day

this open-mouthed-kiss of a beautiful morning

you have no choice but to observe

you watch a soft sun stretched gently over the garden

stretched over the flowers, 

the cosmos, the tulips, the peonies,

the thornless, browning, burning, blush pink roses 

over the wisps of fog and tiny dandelion florets

and the leftover moonbeams caught between their seeds

glowing like a firefly, fat with happiness

you breathe-

in and out,

just as the trees do

just as the sky does,

and bid farewell to august once more