Herzeleid

Every Virginia summer was more song than singer.
The days a slow drip of treacle. Time measured
in trash bags bursting with peach pits, the height
of scallion stalks in Bombay Sapphire bottles.
The sitcom stickiness of things was an easy joke—
rotating permutations of roommates, our closed loop
of lovers. We didn’t do things so much as we pressed
our repeated shapes into that resinous heat.
By August the air felt sickening in its proximity
to the deep green secret. But that last afternoon
on the river when we thought we were old,
my memory is so clear it ossifies into cruelty:
the cheap roseate sheen of my bikini, a backpack
stuffed with lagers that burst as we crossed the rocks
and carved an abrupt comma across your left thigh,
the cut still foaming when we noticed it. And then,
just as keenly: the certainty that it would be nothing
to take it from you. You would never miss a thimbleful
of blood staining my baby blue beach towel and
I could see its color becoming the entire world.