My skin hums with a stale leftover heat
like the aftertaste of toast
on the tounge of the palm
wrapped around a used toaster.

My hair crunches
like thin dry crusts around my face,
my cheeks still buttery and soft and glistening from lotion.

I am the transformed wonderbread
that laid and carmalized in the balmy oven.

I am warmly darkened,
cooked to a new word.
I am dehydrated with sunshine,
satiated with sunscreen.
I am happily toast.

I love you like watermellon
loves the globed cheeks of toddlers,
I love you like corn
loves the space between braces,
I love you like peach pits
love the side of backroads
where they're spit
and grow into sweet leafy parasols,
I love you like summer.

Phantom Nostalgia

I don't know what all I want from life. But I know that I want friends who have bonfires. Who sleep in tents and swim on summer nights, who make out in the moonlight and dance to music from the car radio. Who love as soft and wistful as dry strands of hair blown across still-damp shoulders. Who drain the moonlight for every ounce it's worth, fall asleep at it's last drop, and ignore the sun til noon. Who understand that their bodies are the earth and each of us is the earth and there is no "personal space", that we are all everywhere and everything and that this night, from the fireflies in the dirt to the stars above wishing on shooting planes, belongs to us.