Jerl Surratt
Playing with Fire
I’m glad it’s going to rain.
It’s been so dry. No lightning yet.
Thunder’s too far off,
but lightning bugs for the first time
this summer, cheering me up
as much as such things do anymore.
Delicate lights, gone in an instant.
I wish I could go back if for an instant
and feel exactly how it must have felt
to lie beside you when we spent
our one and only night together.
I’m less than delicately emptier
for every piece of news I get
like hers today, in cold gray type
on a cold gray screen, mixing in
with all the others sent to prove
I’m never going to see someone
I cared about again. This time
from your kid sister, who’s got to be
sixty-something by now, if she’s
a day. I’m a sitting duck out here
on the top step of the back porch.
But what the hell. I’m going to stay.
Maybe you know why, for all I know.
Stiff as I am already from working
in the yard all afternoon, I’m going
to bend this fool neck back as far
as I can when it starts to rain, no matter
how much it hurts, and face the sky
so it’ll look like I’m having myself
a good cry, and no one to see it
unless you’re with that god you said
you hoped was looking the other way
the night we made love that summer,
the Summer of Love, surprising ourselves
and laughing. I’m going to die over there,
you said. We might as well do something
you’ll remember me for. You better!
And you shipped out the next weekend.
Out and into a war your body survived.
But you came back a different boy.
A different man, I mean. What a mess
I’ll be inside once I’m soaked through,
my whole body looking like it’s cried
when I undress again, as if for you.