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MEGAN ARCHIBEQUE
I have given all of you a house at the end of a dead-end street.
The front door hangs half open
It’s been kicked in before,
something slimy, shiny coats your yellowed walls, sorry about that
A house has many rooms but the only one I’ll unlock today is painted green,
Demeyer park green.
Green like the canal we dipped our toes into
then our ankles and knees and thighs and the bottoms of our shirts even
Your room is damp with that putrid water,
clinging to the skin like sweat does.
Smelling like summer’s swollen bliss,
sun-warmed. there are children
playing somewhere around here, I can hear their laughter out the window
but we are far away from them
getting farther and farther away still
as this canal water, this thick church lot asphalt, this blood-soaked ,tears-strung
quick-sand sinks above our shoulders
and the smell of summer is forgotten and replaced by the salt of you.