July was a fleeting thing

a sunset the colour of a bruised mango / tall glass windows glazed yellow and flung wide open into the summer air, ripe and fat as an apricot ready to burst / strands of golden light soak me from head to toe with religious zeal and i feel like a saint / sheets pegged to dry, billowing gently in the summer wind / the sweet, raucous birdsong grips me by the stomach and squeezes it tight / days running into each other breathlessly like hot wax dripping down the windowsill / the air sticky and shimmering with the hum of a thosand opalescent insect wings / long, dreamy bicycle rides through meadows gone blond in the sun, strewn with random bursts of Bovitiya / the air tinged with the faint scent of orange peel that burns my nostrils / dancing in the kitchen under a square of polleny light / skinned knees, sweat stains and mud kissed hemlines / sucking on my fingers glistening with fruit drop / my eyelids flutter close, watching a patch of restless sunlight dancing up and down on the wall / outside the air drunk and shivering with humidity, shimmying off the tarmac / a sky so blue and wide and never ending that i fear it might swallow me whole if i breathe in too deeply…