She Becomes the Summer

She comes into your life heated and greased like baking sheets,
tall ivory boots sifting from her knees to her toes like sweet sugar and a voice like
melted butter that seeps through your ears and arteries until you are lulled and
content and you find yourself whispering her name into all the corners of your
body and all the corners of your mind.
Her last name is an extension of your fingers and your fingers of your heart and
she holds your heart in her palm like an egg,
running her wrists over its smooth fragile shape,
weighing it and shifting her weight like the shifting of
Its weight.

knowing,

that at any moment it could slip from her hands and reveal a soft yolk,
a sun pooled along the spine of the sidewalk and the elbow of the curb.
and it could slither over the street like her fingers around your shoulders with the
water and the rain and it will bob there, at the bottom of the gutter and peel and
dissolve and
the water will drain.

She carves out the flesh around your heart with a metal spoon and fills it with her
scent. She smells of vanilla and strawberries and damp earth, of summer and red
wine.
You feel as if she's coated the space around your heart with seltzer
so when she leaves,
when she pulls herself from your life like a bed sheet
your chest pops and bubbles and simmers until all you are left with is

chocolate
and the lasting taste of sea salt beneath your tongue.