I catch Summer like a flu:

an early onset of dewy mornings

drizzled over migraines, cooled by the speckled shadows of birds swarming

toward northern winds. May weaves a spread of swallows’ cries homeward and suddenly

I am eleven for a moment, unknowingly leaking my guts onto the sidewalk. When I turn, the

the heel of my shoe smears a crimson crescent across pavement.

There: girlhood as a red dot on shoelaces. Reminded I filled a bus with metallic scents of

childhood, pungent with dirty, tile floors and teeth bursting from gums; this

is the proof I need that I can still bleed from my cuts and not cry. Get up. I am

stronger than I was when I was six, pinching and biting so someone else’s

flesh might be infected with my type of Summer: humidity in a

space between fingers, some tired cicada drumming into the creases of

a folding palm and the crack of chalk against sidewalk inside my

head, dragging. I didn’t understand why people weren’t as ill as I was with lonely nights,

watching the car pull out of the driveway again. Again. Again I am

left alone to wipe my sweat against

the wall. Beyond peeling paint we are separated from Mom’s loneliness the way

December is from Tuesdays. Seven years ago we were still in the community center,

driven into a cool basement while sunset in June melodied herself outside.

Newly sharpened stars sliced into pulsing indigo. Summer cries, too, when she

hurts herself, but quietly; in the form of burnt wood, billowing into her face

and staining the air. There’s an art to picking ourselves apart in silence, and

she knows it best. Every year sickness returns to remind me that I am alone,

with myself, losing crimson in bite-sized pints each full moon.

I am off the road, shouldering the world, shrugging off

eighteen and shedding skin from seventeen until I am fevered

and thirteen again.