July Means

It’s July, which means everything

bagels and pecan braids in the morning,

open windows, closed blinds, oddly timed coughs.

It means watching a drunken sunrise solidify

into gunmetal rain. Means hydrangeas growing

next to the sidewalk; they remind you

of your mom. Means we have secrets we can’t tell

anyone. Means loving something so much you forget

what love even means, and could there ever be

a wrong way to love? Means you thought

you could find out, thought you’d regret it,

and you do, but what could you have done?

Tipsy love is still love and time is still passing.

That means it happened. It’s happening,

somewhere, and in a parallel universe,

he is kissing you instead.

It means an opportunity cost is the next best thing

lost; means, let’s forget about it all. It doesn’t matter anyway.

You forgot what it meant to be happy, forgot

meaning entirely—meaning derived from questioning

uncertainty. You hate redundancy. Sometimes,

you would rather bask in the grey.

So much tenderness in a single second—

intimacy between two people astounds you, romantic

or otherwise—like how you got locked in the hall

with him, or the gossipless gossip shared under her dim

dorm lighting, or all the things you said to him

that felt horribly right at the time. How he watched you

walk and you couldn’t at all, and secretly you liked it:

his presence, his everything momentarily. She convinced

you she wasn’t crying, eyes carving rivers down her sweet,

sweet face. You knew what love was then: being

flawfully, perfectly human with another human,

cupping that fragile golden warmth and holding it

against your chest forever.

Here. You found love, here in July

when you got high for the first time and everything fell

apart but in a good way, unshackled from worry

and you swear you were floating upwards like

a balloon. And little things matter too:

searching for traces of someone in your hoodie,

for something left to preserve. You say

you are poor at self-preservation, but perhaps

You do it, too well for your own good.

All of these things were easy.

It made you realize this is what love is about.

Billy Collins was right: the romance of time means

we’re running out of it, means

the goodness of others, means

the temporary, the softness.

Oh, how beautiful it is to know this feeling—

How wonderful to love.