The dark heavy fall of evening,
once soft, now thick with heat,
swathes around the house,
cutting through the last traces of the day.

You lean out your window to smell what the spring might have left over
from its withered flowers, petals you can see rolled over on themselves,
husks praying for a breath of wind.
Nothing exists but the seasons, stretching before you
Further and further back into the night.
March-April-May is gone, and now
June-July-August marches forward to your window.

Before you shut it in a hurry,
you hear the whine of mosquitoes,
out there, somewhere just past your porch light,
sheltered by the dusk. You know
they love to hurt, always love
to bite you all the more
when you’re too weak to slap them away.

You remember the last time you went outside.
Darkness blanketed the land then, too.
You remember how you closed your eyes, and licked
the iron taste of blood from your lips—
pooling thick and hot, like melted pennies
flooding your mouth.
You did not raise your head, did not
look towards the sky;
you saw no point in calling on angels
you knew would never hear you.