June

Beneath the incipient summer night,

where humidity is still gathering its armies and the sultry heat

has not yet usurped the tolerant spring,

the breeze crawls through my clothing,

warmer than your breath on my lips.

Lifetimes above our heads I notice again the skinny-boy,

that black and white child hanging from his particular star,

fingertips straining and slipping but never quite giving way.

The skinny-boy that has been gripping his pin-point of constellation

for as long as I can recall.

I'll not mention him to you.

He is not concerned with you nor I,

but only with his particular star.

He aches and groans on quiet nights, whispering of the gashes in his palms,

the fingernails that are being pulled from his cuticles

by the edges and facets of the star he refuses to relinquish.

Soon the humidity will again obscure him from view.

Soon he will again be nothing more than half-heard supplications

sinking through the midnight stagnation of full summer.

Until, that is, the heat again abates.

Then I will see if he is still there,

the skinny-boy and his particular star.