I used to smile so brightly when I saw him lying there,

Waiting for me, my “summer boy”

Fresh off the train. 

We would sit by the pond and whisper 

Quiet as cattails blowing in the wind.

While spring was bitter and fall melancholy,

And winter oh winter was so, so lonely,

Summer was warm and hazy and scraped knees and messy blonde hair. 

And I will not tell you where I met my summer boy,

For that is for me to cherish and keep.

For me to remember in sepia photographs, 

Warm and hazy and--

Even though I no longer see him, 

Even though in my golden years,

Spring is anxious and fall is for cramming and winter is cold and cold and cold 

(freezing, aching, clawing at your legs trying to pull you under a frostbitten expanse).

When I return home in the summer-

No longer warm and hazy, 

But a cicada filled musk.

I still scrape my knees,

And swear that I see that same messy blonde hair.

And I whisper to the pond,

Quiet, as the cattails fail to whisper back.

(A miserable substitute)

I wish to offer him a stalk, 

to tell him of my springs, and falls, 

Gone from the joy that was our youth. 

And I wish to tell him of these non-summers

That seem to mirror, unrelentingly, those winters.

But, I will not (cannot) tell you where my summer boy went. 

For just as how he failed to whisper “do not go” 

I failed to reply “I will come home.”