Cruel Summer

**To find out more about the prompt that inspired this post, click here**

See the thing is: I suck at poetry

and I thought that maybe this time, since

I was writing about you, it’d turn out well–

That my having felt new and nice things would

give me words and sounds.

 

I wanted to compare myself

to dead land, and you to spring rain

because I finally understood those first few

lines of The Waste Land.

 

April is the cruellest month

and it was cruel of me to offer myself up so

freely to be stirred

 

By

–the way you danced to Young Thug

–the way your voice shook every time you spoke up

–the way you looked in glasses and white t-shirts

–the way you listened to me

 

When we talked about ennui

and wanting to be liked.

 

It was cruel of you to offer yourself up so

freely to be loved

by someone who had not loved

not for a long time

not in this godforsakendamnedcountrytheunitedstatesofamerica

 

It was a cruel summer

when we walked together

under umbrellas in warm July rain

and I temporarily fell in love

with this godforsakendamnedcountrytheunitedstatesofamerica

 

And then it stopped raining.

Post submitted by Kanyin