by Elizabeth Dwyer
You hold my next-to-nothings hostage.
Cut off jeans and cotton tees
in their black body bags
designed for leaves.
August sifts into your incense. It
disappears in smoke,
the autumn oak,
the burning scent in my ears.
Shaded beneath a veil of cloud,
the sun, suitcase packed
dims his winter plans aloud,
the tropics, perhaps.
Leaves of hot yellow lie
still drunk on June’s kiss
under foot of passers-by
the crisp remnants of dying stars.
Dear runaway Summer,
Forgive me if I blinked too fast,
if I hugged you too tight,
if I drank you too fast.
Each year
I cling to you-
Seven, in an overstuffed moving van
face pressed against the rear window.
*
Elizabeth Dwyer is a senior at Old Dominion University majoring in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. She plans to attend graduate school in hopes to become a college Professor. Ms. Dwyer’s poems “Decor,” and “September, closet raider,” received Honorable Mentions in Old Dominion University’s 2011 College Poetry Prize contest, Undergraduate division.