A Summer Worth Fighting For

City from the top
Humming steadily
Phantoms screaming on gargoyles


~*~
Marching in corset shoes
Beams and flashes
A surprising squeeze
Congratulations
On the marsh pier
~*~


Dipping beneath
Warm rapids slipping around me
Mountains stagger in the blue


Earning my first checks

Emailing as an intern

Blogging with the famous

Reading like a rainbow

2AM letterheads


~*~
Tears souring
The word Fifth
Like something I’d fought to be
Or two thousand and five hundred dollars a year
~*~



Then rushing over the indoor rivers
Through lush green hallways


And the fiercest, most beautiful,
Intricate, God-powered soul I know
Sobbing on my sofa,
The scent of faith still pouring from her



~*~
And obsidian trees
Challenges made
Under orange streetlamps
The smell of cologne
And breadsticks
Splitting ears and microphones
A sudden
Heartbeat
Words like “unpremeditated,”
“Unimaginable,”
“Suki.”
Addictive warmth
And mindless security
Headlights that didn’t stop
Until you said it
Squeaked it
~*~

Now,
Eyes I don’t trust
Land on my blush simultaneously
All around a yellow lunch table
In a school of lemon and cerulean
And broken friendships
As he zooms in on my little plates of gold
Or she thumbs the fears festering inside them—
Or as a girl asks me to elaborate
Why I’m so silently happy.



God is good.
He spins good from evil
In gifts that you've not yet imagined.