Sometimes I think I would give anything to taste that summer again. Your sweat, my sweat. You tasted of apples and grass and Tennessee whiskey. I tasted of you and only you because you were all I thought of then and now. Some say Time heals all wounds, but I gape, and I drip for you, an open mouth of a glass flute, so full of desire—sweating the return of summer. Dripping in desire for how it used to be then, but now I’m a gaping wound. A reservoir for your sweat, my sweat, so that it stings to my bones, irrigating my wound with fragmented memories. I close my eyes and taste fireworks in the dark, spent sulfur floating in bubbles. But it’s familiar on my tongue and I gulp it like air. The heat swells my tongue. And I still taste grass. Taste apples. Taste Tennessee whiskey. Taste summer on my lips as I hang from yours. And I’d drink it again for one more bite of your flesh—sweet like apples and grass and Tennessee whiskey—my summer, my escape. Yet you pushed me into fall, tripping over my wounds until all my summers tasted of blood, my blood and only my blood. Until all I could see was dark and I was licking my wounds, my fat tongue debriding fragments. Memories. I’m a glass flute gaping with desire, sweating blood for you. Your sweat isn’t my sweat anymore and I think Summer will never taste the same again.
Fred Kearney