I can still feel the waves
floating over my skin –
and what if these really are
the last days
of summer?

I always imagine that you have a heart
of green-grass and pencil shavings
and paint.
And you laugh like a child
because you have the eyes of one.
And speak the way the ocean would sound
if it could
sing.

And I sit here
on the asphalt driveway
and look up at the same sky
you see from your front porch,
and I feel the wind over my ankles –
the same wind that
whispers against
your windows.

How far is
too far?
I always believed that heartstrings
could stretch over an infinite number
of summer afternoons,
but these hours whittle away,
eroded by this quickening pulse
and off-beat heart.