The Versesmith

When the tar is oozing   sticky black lines in the street and children poke at it with sticks on their way home from the pool on the corner, where it’s too hot to even swim, to the houses closed up dark to keep in the cool, you know it’s summer.   When checking for the mail is too much effort, and wearing any clothes a chore, as the fans whirl high speed and fat dogs lay panting on kitchen floors, their masters stepping over them to open refrigerators, and curse the fierce days, and dread the sultry nights to come, you know it’s summer.   When the cricket’s chirp is one long sound all sweaty night long, and the cotton curtains hang as limp as the sheets kicked to the floor, while even moths cling listless to the screens waiting for a nonexistent breeze, and nature itself is holding her fevered breath, you know it’s summer.   ©2019 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved

I hear you early in the morning. I hear, your tires crunching on the gravel drive. Your key fumbling in the backdoor lock. The rustling of your coat as you lay it over the back of the kitchen chair. Your slow steps down the hallway, pausing outside our daughter’s open door to watch her sleep-slowed breathing. Your habitual detour to pee, washing your hands, brushing your teeth. I hear you entering the room where I lay listening. I hear, your labored sigh, as you lower yourself down on the side of the bed to remove your heavy mud-encrusted boots (which, if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times, should have been left on the porch). Your whispered question, “ You awake?” Reaching out to touch you on the back, to feel the soft cotton of your shirt, my fingers slip through you and fall to the mattress. Raising my head, you are not there. But, I hear you. Your voice carries in the windows left open to the sum...