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I want to drink apple cider with you

Like it’s a fine wine,

Make-believe adult, wrapped in your wool blanket,

Counting the minutes until your parents return.

It was the little things that made Martha want to leave home.

I never thought about you in the daytime 

When the sun spread like melted butter over the dwindling 

Blueberry bushes. 

I’d scavenge with them 

The pool is open, did you not hear? 

There’s a banner in town advertising it. 

Summer hasn’t yet slipped from my fingertips. 

I almost want to cry 

Spring is a blossom crushed 

Unbeknownst to you, in your clammy palm. 

It’s a season made of glass, 

Fragile, disintegrating 

Like the April showers filling 

Cracks in the pavement. 

Mauve is the lipstick we stole from your mother, 

smeared sideways across your mouth and all over 

your Sprite bottle, 

a clandestine weight in your pocket