Summer 2020: Writing for Summer, in an Uncertain Spring

Illustration: Dan Streeting

I’ll have squeezed myself open to the sun
Behind curtains
Pottered barefoot
Cool wood; hot coffee,
Then I will be called out, to feel:
Tarmac spit
Skin unfurl
Forehead burn
And yellow grass
And warmth and new and warmth and
To feel, behind sunglasses
With headphones dulling my remaining sense,
To feel relief enter through my pores
To retreat to shade, safety, sangria.
Summer will be in my head and in the sky
In the shouts of children I’ll both hear and imagine
In glasses that will clink and laughter that will beam
Into my pores
Splashes and tan lines
Slip ups and sweat
Beading my upper lip

Sat turning pages in the shadows
Just behind the night
The dusk when, other summers, I’ve been full with sensation:
Buoyant, rinsed out, touched
Will I still feel this, the gentle rushing blood, this restless leg?
The sun, the ice, the perspiration: will it have brought relief
Or will I still be living
Just behind myself?

With tulips catching raindrops outside my window
I put my hand on the warmth of my coffee cup.
I only know
That
When summer calls me out
I’ll go
Barefoot