Summer solstice or summer solitude? Neither. Summer sweat. Summer sun.
Sometimes I wake and I let myself outside, morning rays sink into my freckle-face. Lifting weights in the park, clothing collecting moisture.
Throwing sand-filled sacks so hard on the ground thinking of Donald Trump’s orange head smashing into the blacktop like a pumpkin.
Remember when I wore a pink pussy hat? Grab the sand bag by her pussy. Grab the sand bag by their pussy. Sand bags are non-binary.
Trump indicted again for the sixth of January. Nancy Pelosi crouched down in the capitol. Will Nancy Pelosi cancel student loans? Nancy Pelosi clapping at Trump.
Back at my apartment my boyfriend slumps on a yoga mat. He is so sweaty. In the morning he runs while I smash, toss, lift Trump’s head.
We put on the Tour de France for women. We put on soccer for women. Women’s sports are human sports.
Humans aren’t alone in the galaxy. The government possesses alien bodies. I wonder who will win Love Island this year. I wonder if aliens know about Trump. I wonder if aliens would smash his head.
I read The New York Times Style Section while my boyfriend gets ready for work. He wears a button up in which he will sweat. He wears crisp pants. This is what you wear if you do politics. Even Trump. Even Joe.
We did it Joe. We found the aliens.
I kiss my boyfriend’s cheek goodbye. I kiss my boyfriend’s lips goodbye. I sit on my stoop and write. Summer solitude.
I wave hello to everyone I know as they pass. Summer social. Hello Dana. Hello Andy. Hello Barry. Hello Lillian. Hello Barry’s son. Hello Bryan. Hello Tyler. Hello Sadé. Hello Nikki. Hello Eric. Hello little baby Nico.
At night I sit outdoors with damp hair and an orange bag and a Blue Moon with an orange slice.
You can sit outside without sweating, nature’s rare summer gift. You can get tipsy off of less than one draft beer when you’re on Lexapro.
Poetry can be read on a splintered park bench at the same time that lime green motorcycles rev their engines, making the air taste like exhaust and filling your eardrums with hard sound.
Girls at tables behind you can cut their hair to their chins and make you want to cut your hair to your chin. You can think someone is a girl when they are not.
Instagram shows me angular bags with swooping open mouths and I want the bags but I can’t have them. I have too many bags.
You can order from a food truck menu like a rosary. Taco. Torta. Burrito. Quesadilla. Nachos. Taco. Torta. Burrito. Quesadilla. Nachos.
Too many thoughts. Time to go home.
To have lived in New York is to have lived on the C train in the thick of summer, stumbling into a lucky air conditioned car, relief, your soaked ribbed shirt making you shiver, absorbing all the cold.
I ride the train up and down and up and down: Kingston Throop to Nostrand to Franklin to Clinton-Washington to Lafayette to Hoyt-Schermerhorn to Jay Street MetroTech, and so on.
Each street name a passing flash, punctuating the black expanse of subway tunnel.
Another day begins. I jog one point five miles in the muggy sun-air. My legs are sore like the day after you walk a lot unexpectedly, my hamstrings tight phone cables.
On Decatur Street they are building luxury apartments where there used to be an urgent care. There will be workout rooms that smell like astroturf and a parking garage for expensive cars.
At home I sip iced coffee with a straw while I scratch my boyfriend’s sweaty chest, which he likes to trim with a Manscaped with a capital M, though I prefer it un-scaped, untouched. His body his choice.
Then I write a pitch and send it to a magazine that covers cake. Then I respond to an editor and say yes, I would love to cover the release of a new book I have not yet read.
Then I shower and press drugstore lotion onto my face and part my hair with a pink comb. For one second I am beautiful and then I am ugly again.
I remember I learned how to spell the word beautiful in elementary school like B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L. When I write “beautiful” in my notebook my mind spells it out loud.
Then I walk to a coffee shop and create social media copy for a nicotine gum lozenge company until it thunders.
Summer showers. Summer’s over.
Lovely!
so beautiful