summers.

the dirt feels soft
as i reach into the body of
the earth, pulling out the
stems and roots of things,
things like tumors,
growing rapidly without cause
and strangling everything around it.

in its place, i plant crisp peppers
and yellow-red tomatoes, growing like
vines up the red, red fence.
my hands are dark and dingy,
caked with dirt underneath my
fingernails and in the creases my palm.

and when the rain opens up the skies
i sit on the ground, surrounded by the
smell of sweet peppers in the air
and the light lingering scent of mint.
i sit still as a flower, rooted into the earth
Let hot-cold waves of summer rain
wash over me as if i were a
league of thirsty men in a desert,
i let the rain soak into my skin,
wishing i could, like a straggling plant, absorb it
into my very being.

i sit as the water continues to pour,
and the plants drown in the relentless torrent
puddles forming in the dirt like
lakes that have been left untended
dirty and without beauty.
i clench my fists in the ground,
feel the tangles of roots and rocks,
and the cling of the dirt on my skin
and think
i have never felt more beautiful.