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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  

She's hidden, cowering in the corner,

as she waits, mouth open,

words frozen on her lips.

She does not speak.

I mold my sadness into poetry and she watches me,

amber eyes taking in everything and nothing.

The wood is lush and dappled with light, 

the first April flowers poking out of the ground, snow

melting under my bare feet. 

The ache of you digs into my chest like a sharpened blade,

when she sang, she sang a rhapsody

tender words that arced across the room on golden strings

like her un-brushed curls that flew in the wind

from the open window behind her.