The sun comes to her home in the summer
and white light winkles like teeth
on the wet walls where
the sea has dragged its bruise-swell tongue
This makes her love think about mouths
The other was conch plush
And curved
The brink of a smile
She eats sand to soften her lips
and practices mystery in the gash of the mirror
But the sea keeps on licking
So they do not stay home in the summer
She was born in the summer
With a mouth full of flowers
Through her nose and her eyes
She blinked the yellow-white stigma
and her laugh would spread pollens
And taste of lilies
The room would smell of it for hours
This makes her love think about flowers
the other
smelt like roses
So she bathes in their stems
Her thighs
Corpse-mottled with pricks
Till her cells smells like buds
Her bones petunias
And he presses his nose and his lips
To the bruises
Like he can find a bit of the other
In the petal red stench of her blood
But her teeth keep on growing
and the yellow-white is showing
So she does not laugh anymore in the Summer
Her skin flushes wet in the Summer
Brown nut and warm with the red
It blushes and pocks at her joints and her knots
And poppies bloom across the bones in her back
This makes her love think of heat
The other was cold
and unwarming
So she lives in the shadow and follows the cold
Like the cat follows the sun cross the morning
and he smiles at the white of her touch
She knows he liked her complexion better after she fell
and was taken up, lifeless
on the flat of the Cobb
and she oils the floor
hopes her feet to skid
her touch to toe
ground to nose
but still the sun seeks her tips in the light of the glass
So she draws the shades in the Summer
Her head sprouts red in the summer
It has always been heavy and dark
the light through the teak splits and cracks
and bright seams of garnet spurt
Crown dark and bloody
This makes her love think about hair
The other was yellow-blonde
Dawning
So she covers her hair with the silk of her organs
Trades gold eyes for the softness of yellow
Tie it round the thighs of her shoulders
He pull-presses it greedily
His mouth hungry and yawning
But careful
Not to displace her head’s awning
But still in the depths of her night
Her hair is still brown
So they do not share beds in the Summer
Her eyes melt in the heat of his Summer
he burns and he burns and he eats her
and in her wax left pooled at his wick
He makes other hands from the white of her fingers
Still her own nails will split back from the skin of the surface
And the flowers that tap at her window bloom in rings that look like
empty houses
soft mouths
cold skin
blonde hair
and roses
they flatten in the gap between shelf and the glass
and they flatten in the gaps in her head
They, like her husband
They wish her
The one given, lifefull
Wish her dead
He does not come home in the Summer
(she rips her own head from the stalk)
OR
(she rips their heads from their stalks)
She cuts her hair in the summer
And the pale crown of her neck browns
And her upturned nose snorts the light
She cuts the roses in the summer
And fills the house with lilies
They make the house smell bright
She throws out her scarves in the summer
And lets the sun suck at her collar
Lick her hair till its red
She does not marry him in the summer
(blood and sap in the grass)
She is not her
She is self
She is red brown and lily sweet
(her is shattered in glass)
(so is he)
(so are his fingers)
(and his skull)
The sun is her home in the summer
And her own hands
Feel better than his-
Her love’s-
Ever did
Photography by Isabella Baxter
