The Heat That Never Leaves

I should like the summer
But I am tired of the heat
I am tired of the long lilting poems
Cracking like limestone on the ground

The words that don’t reach my ears
Too trodden upon to lift their wings above the sun
Have decided to go someplace where the embrace of heat isn’t choking

Where instead the rain comes down
Washing away what yesterday brought about

But here
The heat never leaves
It places its hand around your throat
Making you beg for a release

Please God let the rain come down
Let it fix the wounds that dance across my knees
Let it rinse away the salt that’s burrowed its way in too deep

Let it give me back my voice
One that is parched and hunched over
Like an old woman hiking the streets of the town she grew up
The heat will turn her to nothing

She knows she will go from dust to dust
But what will return her to you
Is the rain

The rain that pounds and drums and leaves
Always it leaves
There for you to take it for granted
There for you to wish it to leave

Until the sun comes back
Until the clouds decide to let the sun shine
And the sun is worse than the rain