Heatwave

This weather rewinds time.
I am in the park, all summer,
planning to tell you the truth when we return to tight ties and shirts that unbutton at the insistence of hungry, humbled eyes.
The breeze is beaten back by the blazing sun,
and I swing back and forth,
swinging between Green Man and How The Mighty Fall,
depending on whether I am elated or deflated that day,
by how in love with you I am.
Sometimes, it is the sweetest thing,
and I am what I am,
but sometimes,
I wish I was dead.

The things that we do are a secret.
The way I think of you is a secret:
I can keep a secret, for about fifteen years,
and then it finds it’s way out of my tired tears,
and every girl that I go mad for looks a little too much like you,
because you are still so real to me,
in spite of everything.

Summer slunk back to my door,
as it always does,
and I live across from the park,
passing it every morning when I grab coffee and pastries for whoever shared my space and my soul last night,
and every now and again,
I whisper “Sleep peacefully now my child”,
and I wonder what it would be like to wake up to you,
to bring you coffee and pastry (that neither of us would actually consume),
to just take in the way you smile softly as you awake,
and I have to stop myself from stealing away into a dream again.

Despite the imposing impossibility of it all,
I like to imagine what parts of each of us our child would have.
I secretly hope that he has your smile.
Is that okay? Is there somebody else that it belongs to now?
I kept the lease close to my heart for over a decade,
because it was warm, just like this weather,
and last night,
I sat on the swings and wrote you a song that I’ll never show you,
because I always plan to tell you the truth,
but my plans dissolve, like hopeless ice cream at the mercy of the summer sun.