Summer Break

understand that you make me
pyrophoric. you crack peaches open
with your bare hands and
make me a beggar bride, wet-eyed seabird,
someone who picks the scab. you put
a summer thunderstorm under my tongue
and wander off. what i’m saying is,
you make me a complete fucking idiot.
so here’s my proposal:
i make you a crushed calliope, a sore
in salt, a fixated weirdo.
i make you howl for more
like you didn’t just have some.
i cram your spine so full of july it goes slack.
and in the end, once we’ve
sizzled into two black filaments,
we call it even
and wait for the leaves to turn.

Juliet Kahn is a writer and editor living in Boston, MA . Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Fairy Tale Review, Gather, and Uncanny Magazine, among other outlets.