Ammar Butt
Then: is your poem unpublished?
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Summer Love
The boy smiles the color of a fresh sky unburdened by grief and remembering.
And I think it's getting warmer, everyday.
I think I loved you best when warmth was something hoarded between limbs, and sweat was caused by something more than just a hot atmosphere.
I think I loved you best in the summers, when we could feel the sweat gathering in our palms as we held hands under the table, when we would lay under the infinite sky in the school playground and measure the limits of our future.
I think I loved you best when the air had a purpose, when you knew who's arms to fall into when yours betrayed you.
And I wish that would happen again.
I wish there was something more to live for than to live for the people I maybe love.
I toss my dice and predict the unmovable future and only bad numbers fall back.
And I keep saying, "This time. This time." As if I already know that It can't get worst than this.
As If I'm still hopeful, that things will get better.
As if I am still snubbing the voice inside me that keeps asking, "What happens if they don't."
But isn't hope another thing you can only feel, just like everything else you think can make life better; like God, or Love.
Yet here I am, still drunk on better days. Standing on two feet and weak faith, Alive (hypothetically.)
Here I am in the summer's unbearable yawn for the purpose of romantics to melt from my face.
And I say "Pour. Pour." And mean to say "Dear body melt into a river of granted wishes." Another clear distilled vessel for you to find your reflection in.
And may I go first, please? To see if my eyes still shine the same, if they still sparkle to the sight of who I once called love.
When someone I miss or someone I once missed reaches me through the dark river of dreams, her tears like stars sinking their fangs into the neck of the nightsky.
And I can't tell if this is a dream or another one of those moments when someone I love waves goodbye under a full moon, a gesture that clearly means, "The End that your trembling hands reach out to, is here."
And nights like these have always led to the soft and smooth syrupy sound of jazz healing my heart, when I would open my mouth and the thick sweet medicine of music would crawl down my throat, and I would sing my cry into a song, as I would watch my anxiety and depression dance in the dark in attempt to soothe my restless heart.
But I'm not afraid this time,
This time I wish it were real.
This time I sit by the lake and watch the water slowly move away from where I can see it coming, each molecule letting go of the other, waving goodbye to someone they once loved, and I wish I could touch the people I once loved.
But as all things that we wish to be alive and breathing, and real enough to touch, claim their existence to be nothing more than a dream or a shadow, or something you can pass your fingers through.
Nothing more than something we've just given a name to; like God or love.
So I sit up in my bed and look out the window to watch the winter mist turn into the summer clouds floating in the clear blue sky as it reveals all the secrets of the night it kept from God.
And the sun slowly climbs up the sky, as summer is resurrected once more.
And I roll my dice one more time, and it's a six.
Marianne Reninger
Doctor Fab
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