Warm Year Poem by Saydra Basta

The heat of the sticky summer evenings
Drenches you
Like the sickly sweet juice of a peach running down your chin
And tracing the edge of your neck
Slicking your skin in musky brine
The taste is familiar
And clings to your tongue like an old sultry song
That creaks through the wooden floorboards
Through some stained glass memory
Shimmering in the sunlight of your reckless youth
Like some southern Gothic that languidly rests in your distant rememberance
Beneath the twigs of the fig tree
Where once you lay sprawled and simmering
After climbing with scraped knees and itchy eyes
Plucking the ripe fruit from its limbs
Swallowing seeds and sun
Sleeping intoxicated in the dew
Following the afternoon spoils
This is where the world was yours
And time was but a shadows pass
Hold fast these quiet reflections
That fall into the soil
After you forget them there