If the Summer

Oh, if the summer
Leafy screens
Of the undersides of bushes
Took me in like time machines
I’d crawl out
Red-faced
2006
And set my mind to find you
Inside the library bricks
And with your date-stamper
You’d brand my hand
I’m the nervous camper
Who would happily choke on the woodsmoke
To lie next to you where you woke
In the sand

Oh, what a bummer
Not to re-begin
Not to have a sunburn
Marrying the sum of our skin
And in some very small rooms
Where we’d sweat through the sheets
I’d curse the hour that it all blooms
And just pray to God it repeats

M.A.C. and Elizabeth
Sweating through the
Sheets with
A memory and a myth
The balcony of Meredith’s
Apartment

Blinded my eye sockets to the
Sight of Marian
The youngest memories burst
Like a sun
In the hot black night I
Found my contrarian
If any girl is cursed
She’s the one
And I am the curse
I am the worst

Oh, if the summer
Lake and pool
Cease to make my body
Feel so young and cool
For I’ve been burned so badly
In the worst way
By squandering so sadly
By being cruel
In that way