I’VE BROUGHT THIS SUMMER JUST FOR YOU

Your chest’s meadow has dried up
You don’t write letters these days
There’s a tumult of tears
In your tempered letters
Your body’s so tender; it makes me
Want to cover you with many arms

There is no one else on this summer street, except
The postman carrying his bag of strangled letters,
And the girl who’s lost her childhood secrets
When the strange bird of summer
That drinks up all the streams in one swift gulp
Arrives quietly, the rocks too come awake
Children refuse to play
Beneath the sun that daily soaks in blood and rises
Inside an empty house,
The telephone’s been ringing for a long time now
Girls’ eyes are afloat in the haze

In an earlier summer, too hot
For trees to stand their ground,
You had called my body a live expanse
I found, when I awoke from sleep,
That the handbag where
I had stashed away your kisses
And our quarrels stiff with the salt of tears,
Had been opened
This summer that brings to mind
A doused lamp’s acrid smell,
I’ve brought along just for you
Do write me letters. Do.

I’VE BROUGHT THIS SUMMER JUST FOR YOU