Let’s call this the summer of sweat-stained nostalgia where I pour out enough only to be filled with indecision.

It is mid-August and cicadas are leaving their skins behind under my bare, busted feet. I buy a new nose ring in hopes I look different than I did the day before.

Let’s call this the summer of the stinger when yellow jackets double down on claiming the sidewalk in their warning stripes and ferocious hum.

I’ve been smoking menthols hoping heaven tastes nothing like this. I’ve been gaining weight and doing nothing but dreaming of being good. There is a high probability I am nothing like good. There is so much toxicity in calling your ex and hoping to be friends.

Let’s call this the summer of social suicide when I thirst for something that has no name but surely has an address.

I want to be beautiful; truly I do. Amen. Bring me Autumn. Amen. Hell is anywhere you recognize yourself as catastrophe. Amen. Do unto others as you would have love do unto you. Amen.

Samuel J Fox is a bisexual poet and essayist writing out of the Southern US. He is poetry editor for Bending Genres and appears in numerous online and print journals. He tweets (@samueljfox).

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

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