The Middle Zone

Summer is coming to its final pages, and
I'm stuck in this in-between place
where my brain is telling me to
keep walking along this straight line,
never looking back,
while my heart thinks I should
stay right here, in August,
and never face forward.

This middle zone has me wanting those
fat, heavy tears to fall
down the sides of my face –
the never-ending kind that makes
my cheeks hot & my mouth as dry as sand.

I wish I never came to the middle zone.