from Sara Matson

summer always meant uneasy, that’s why i hate it. fear was meant to be cherished, reveled + released in sweaty fisted fun-size. sunset in my june meant ache. the potential for loss has always kept me hard breathed, zippered. sticky shoe terror in the draining light. summer is my dad laughing at my terror, tiny nails seeking throat. summer is constant handwashing from the garbage can child. photograph of the heavy stacking sound. roller skates on tailbone pavement. summer is constant teasing about armpit hair. high necked shame. my fuzzy dolphins released when it’s just the three of us, me, you, and the shark in the deep end of the pool. squeezing myself into light fixtures to eat delicate ankle bones, rubbed raw against the shallow wall. sophistication. 

not perception. not the act of performance. something else. a warm between, like the crook of my knee. tacky shout to the last leghole. i have books of fear, each less legible than the previous. slapping onto linoleum, flipping for the correct page. ten minutes too long. dirt mound invented to confront us all. 

webbed funnel from the corner of my mouth to the edge of the neighbor’s kitchen window. i become a turning point, a legend. a change of commitment. welcome like the gentle glide of seasons over a city street. grassbugs see me as i am: a mild hunchback, stinking of gentle starlight, guiding your kitten flesh fingers to the cervix of my meaty sky.