August

Sweat slips down my spine
listless summertime heat and
the things I didn’t expect
to be feeling so soon after the last time.
This isn’t how I thought things would go but I am learning that
summers, like second chances, only come around once.
Sweat slips down my spine
it’s too hot to sleep and I
keep having those conversations that can only happen in the dark,
keep sending myself back down the
cobwebbed corridors of the past
toward things that are not sad but dry,
like how the skies have been dry, and
there’s so many things I want to say to you, like
it broke 90 degrees again today, and
summers are like second chances no two are the same, and
do you believe in ghosts because I swear I’ve been seeing them.
I’ve always thought that summer was for ghosts, or at least for
the empty feeling of cotton candy placed on your tongue by the boy
who loved you at fifteen but by sixteen had forgotten your name.
And I wish I could drown the specters, but
we’ve been in a drought since March so there’s nothing to do but watch them
multiply, like mosquitos, like suppressed emotions that you can’t
hold back any longer.
Sweat slips down my spine.
I spend a lot of time wondering:
when it will rain, why I keep
getting second chances, whether
or not the heat
will break. 

Hailey Spencer is a writer with an obsession for fairy tales. Her poetry has been published online and in print. She appeared in episode 24 of the Mytholadies podcast to discuss Tale-Type 510A, commonly referred to as Cinderella. She lives in Seattle with her wife, Elizabeth . For more on Hailey and her work, go to haileyspencerwrites.com