A warm summer night
when the neighbor's TV
sounds like its in your living room
and the entire community
is a cacophony of blue light,
repetitive commercials and sitcoms.
The evening sky
is an eighties disco bar,
spinning around
a stained pineapple orb
delicately splaying juice.
The humidity is unbearable,
my wife sweats like a leaky
fire hydrant in front of an inferno
and keeps itching for a fight.
I avoid her remarks
like I side step the cracks
on a city sidewalk.
She laughs, cries,
yells an absurd expletive,
and I can't help but think
how her tears must be a composite
of a large ice coffee, with 9 milks, 2 sugars
and a cream cheese multi-grain bagel.
Her mom is here again,
though its been ten years since she's passed.
Thirty years since she lost her father.
She must have talked to someone
with parent's today,
haunting warm summer memories.
I feel an ache for her,
a void I can't fill,
a subject she won't even bring up.
I want to walk over, hold her,
but finally get her out on the porch.
She's convinced she's ruined everything.
I lift her chin
and tell her to smell
the sweet scent of summer
just beyond the porch screens.
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