Poems for Summer – Cash Compson

June 16, 2023

I Deleted Bumble Every Week That Summer

 

I window-shopped for

love, spoke to people

as sad as me. Aflame, aghast. Then I 

said nothing, ever. Foregone.

Just left them in the middle

of their own lives, far from the

equinox, never 

having a day back that’s

already been delivered. Christmas 

gone with Halloween again,

the mirror never being more beautiful

again, or as kind as it once was,

 

& I’d delete

it. Go get high &

eat fast food alone & laugh

at the power vested

in everyone alive, at 

how anyone can 

make himself a 

god in the drunken, 

 

lessening light of August, when people

flock to the water, spread

themselves on the edge of the

continent just to pretend 

long days are better 

than the blackened 

Forever, ageless nights

just beyond the sea, over

where we can’t see anymore

and it’s just some other

you: present, sustained,

somehow. 

 

 

Snow Day

 

Under the moon, something

about us sleeping. We return,

but it’s new. Inside a 

simple mind. Edenic in how

you feel so untouched. Nothing I’ve ever

read has stuck. Not really. How 

we start each day with thanklessness. Bold

& soaked through. Smoke us. Be 

different. Anti-revolution 

around the sun. Glacial. Being

anti-war is like being anti-man.

We return, but it’s new.

 

We return, but it’s you.

Life is not poetry. I 

know. Once you’ve left,

you’ve left. I’m at 

church all week. Find

me lucid in a warm God

sleep. Petrified by you &

your tomorrows. Up like

powder, like snow. 

 

 

Natalie, at rest

 

October: yours, 

in a life

like how

foliage falls—with 

the illusion of

a dance. When 

you said soon, I never knew 

I’d be here. Turning with

the burnt mornings. Leaves 

smell like 1996. Everyone

gets older but me. Life is

your hills, not their 

mountains. Atrophy of

my sleepless crown, yet here I 

am, wearing you. This

ocean is finally open but

I can’t go in. So alone,

finally. It’s lighter than

we lived it last, don’t

you think?