July Thirst

This poem was first published in Vol.1 of Cycles by Juniper Zine. You can read it here.

The watermelon splits on the porch step—
a sound like summer cracking its knuckles.
Not like a broken promise,
but a girl’s knees
swinging over the fence, daring the world to catch her.

Pink flesh, too bright for the hour, bleeds into the bowl of my hands.
The seeds are black eyes staring back,
each one a pit I was told to swallow once.
They’ll grow inside you, someone joked.
I believed them. I still check the mirror for vines.

Now, juice runs to my elbows, freckling my knees,
sticky as recollections of summers before—
with a lingering sweetness.
I spit a seed into the grass,
half-hoping it takes root.

But nothing grows here anymore.
The sun leans close, warm as my mother’s palm
checking for fever. You’re fine, she murmurs.
You’re still here.
I eat until my fingers glisten

waiting for my hands to tremble,
waiting for the rind to whisper
what only the past knows.
Summer hums, low and gold,
a hymn for the almost-gone.

Herein lies the lesson:
how hunger and feast taste the same
once you reach a certain age. Summer is too golden to waste.
We swallow what we can;
we let the rest go.