Summers Archaeology

Last summer laying out in the garden

Hoping to imprint the lace of my bra

Deep into my skin

To copy the intricate details of my underwear

Onto the curve of my legs

Hot from waking

Bed Sheets draped onto the floor

I was an artist last night in my sleep

Drawing sketches onto the cotton

Then wiping them away with the side of my cheek

Hot from hanging the two dresses and three

Skirts an old shirt onto the line

Balancing act on my toes to reach

The fine thread of the line to place the clothing

Over like my grandmother taught me all those

Summers ago

Still having to stretch my ankles high enough

To place the pegs cover the clothes

Hot from waking

Hoping to imprint the shapes of my underwear

Deep into my skin

Last summer or was it a summer before

I opened my mouth and thought

I could be the first to swallow the sun

When all I consumed was the sweet pollen of the

Bluebells growing by the fence

I closed my mouth and turned it into the grass

Showing the sun my back

Whispering of the ache in my stomach

Perhaps from the empty glass of milk

Now left to watch me on the windowsill

With pearls still in droplets around the rim

Imprints of my lips

Braiding sweet warm grass between my hair

Last summer when I hadn’t cut my hair

Last summer where I hadn’t cut my hair and

So didn’t have the lump in the back of my throat of

Girlhood promises bubbling at my tongue

Telling my grandmother while she brushed down my hair one morning

One mourning

I would never dream of cutting my hair

What would be there to intertwine the stems of flowers with

Or braid like this sweet grass while I lay with my head in her lap

Last summer when I hadn’t cut my hair

I lift my fingers to the sunlight

Gentle morning sunlight

Sunlight of my ancestors

Nothing has changed

Sunlight of my ancestors

Has everything changed

Your fingertips traced in a different story

But we lift our fingers all the same

The sun and I looking at each other

Two paintings across the gallery hall

The lace on my breast

Arching in this sun

Carved from cream paint to form this cream lace

And my face shows my desire

For the sun to not see the way

I looked to the moon last night

In our rendezvous

Like I hope the moon does not see the way

I look now into the sun

Like two paintings across the gallery halls

While the soft shadows of the clothes on the line

Wave in the soft breeze like the oceans currents

From a painting further down the hall that we will never see

Is this my destiny

Once someone asked me

How I know something is complete

I said my feelings

They didn’t like that answer

So I told them when my teeth start to feel

Dry from whispering my devotions

They liked that answer better

Allotted into their physical accounts

They only cared how I knew something was finished

Not how I created

I exist to create worlds I tell the grass stuck to my lips

I find my salvation there

Avowed collector of sentiments

Observations

Limitations

They didn’t understand any of those things

They wrote me a letter

I never wrote back if I did it would have been

My grass stained elbows

Imprinted on the paper

Is this my destiny because here

Speaking to the grass my teeth are not starting to feel dry

Soft cotton pointelle

Arms stretched above my head

That summer of solitude

Laying in the garden waiting to see if the cream

Lace of my underwear will imprint into my skin

Wanting to find it in weeks to come

Like a long forgotten treasure

A rediscovery of a new found God

I press my fingers into my flesh to

Find what was once alive

Deep into my flesh

I am the first archaeologist to

Discover a blooming flower

Hidden between lips

And I could have been the first archaeologist

To discovers the summers sun still burning

In a stomach if only that summer I had

Figured out how to swallow the sun laying out in the garden

Hoping to imprint the lace of my bra

Deep into my skin

To copy the intricate details of my underwear

Onto the curve of my legs