June 6th, 2010

I.

Summer skin. June is a good month for water. The backyard pools begin to resurrect. Nights are a mixture of flooded yards in the Lower Valley and the scent of mesquite drifts from block to block. Everyone bar b ques. Everyone has a birthday. Triple digit weather. Nothing moves.

II.

Two-thousand-and-five. I weigh one hundred and eight pounds and spend my nights sitting next to a window that overlooks a grimy street in a bad neighbordhood. I can hear conversations float up from the bar below and patiently endure the little air my fan gives me. My room is bare save for the bed, not yet broken in. The room is painted a dark blue. My bedroom is a shade of green but the room is small and too hot so I sit in this one. I spend some nights playing chess with J. Some nights I spend arguing with M. I am mostly too weak to choose. When the blue lightning hits outside my window, I am always afraid I am too close.

III.

June makes me miss July. Monsoon season. A month of wild grasses that strangle the railroad tracks. Cars underwater.

IV.

Summer grows on me. Peach skies and rolling thunder. The morning always unfolding in a slow but steady golden stupor and then the same piercing light as the sun begins to set and makes it impossible to drive without a blinding glare. The days sometimes unbearably long and unevenly weathered. The clouds lull, the traffic begins to slow. The air conditioners moan and hiss. I miss backyards in Georgia and Connecticut green; orange trees in California, my skinned knees on the rocky coasts of Maine.

V.

Different rooms this time. No one is shy. Summer simplifies. The clothes are basic, undressing unnecessary. The caress of new skin. Intervals of air from a noisy ceiling fan. Drowning out. Closing in.