June

Title from Pinback (MySpace)



I was thinking about you the other night.

How I seem to miss you most when summer's starting,

in the middle of June, when the kids all get half-days

so the afternoons are full of shrieks and giggles

and the water-pressure fizz of a pump-action squirt gun.



And how you looked when I last saw you:

with mottled grey skin sagging at your joints

like a dirty old shirt you were about to rip off

so we could feel each other's skin as we lay

on my ancient double-sized mattress that worked

to make you feel every loose and firm spring in her ancient body

sticking into every fleshy part of your nubile form.

The parts that touching would make my entire body tremble in anticipation.

The parts I'd dream about in high school.

The parts that shrunk from your ill form.



And I realized that, for all I know, you could be dead.

Maybe you never got better.

Maybe you shed the grey skin and soft curves for a white death shroud.

I don't think your family would bother to tell me.

I almost hope they wouldn't,

because as hard as it is to miss who you were,

I don't think I could bear to miss who you'd never be.