The sky is china cold and wedgewood blue and tells you that summer has been kicked over and here, here at last is the parade of colours whose vibrancy belies the slow winding down ending. You want to watch the trees develop crispy deep-fried golden nugget leaves, only watch them as each hour they get a little more brown, a little more over cooked. Your hair was shorn for the summer heat, and dyed brightest red, although it has faded to a merely vivid copper now, but when he grasps it in his hands the threads stay behind on his fingers like tiny tiny scratches. Your nails are too loose to scratch him now as he once liked, you feel withered and dry towards the end, after the lessons he has taught you. No more scratching, please? Keratin slivers left in your wake as you move through the bruised season, your mouth of over-ripe plums a hard study all by itself. The bouyant sky tells you you should be cheerful but it is him that is evergreen. You gather your thoughts, pull together that little spark of life into a kernel and swallow it deep inside you as the thing of you and him falters and fails, your skin dries and tightens and your finger bones split away at the dry knuckle joints, drifting to the ground to join the leaves. You wanted to plead for summer again but your arms end in sticks now and your voice is arid and he does not understand semaphore. Lie down in the woods and wait, the layered carpet of the forest floor will take you and make you comfortable, although it will tickle to start with, but the insects only want to feel you, the fungus wants to get to know you. You will grow again, I promise.
also published in negative suck November 2010
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