It’s October now,
but the hot wind of summer pours in.
I am burned like the red leaves on the trees
and I itch.

I want to drive by your house,
just to see the spot where we sat on your stoop,
poking the dust with a stick, our eyes round like planets
but for the marks of your shoes I could have dreamed it.

The walls are cardboard,
it can’t hold you anymore.
You serpent, you shed it like an old skin
like waking up.
and it’s only when you are gone
that I can feel my own skin,
too tight, coming off in strips.
It lines the blankets,
wrapped around the mattress that has already forgotten you.

I’d try to crawl into your empty house,
and find the places we used lay together
in your room, a tree house, an attic
but the imprints of words, hard and soft, are covered in dust
it’s only now I’m alone, I can see I am dented.
It’s only now I can love you.