Rainy Days II: Summer

Countrpoint to Rainy Days

I remember seeing you in the spring, amid the ribbons of rain that kissed trees and concrete alike. I remember seeing you light up in a world that was watercolor-tinted in shades of payne's grey.
You are not the same girl in the summer. You used to shimmer like mother of pearl, skin smooth and pale as milk, all the ivory satin in the world stretched around bone that was just barely a shade lighter. You dressed in black, were shaded with greys, a pen-and-ink portrait in a watercolor world. You were art.
In the summer, you are tan, you are that shade of golden brown that accompanies baked goods begging to consumed. You smell of cinnamon, and when I press the pads of my fingers to your shoulders the skin stretches taut and then breaks, paper shreds left over fresh petals from peace roses, all amber and crimson. You cite sunburn, but I think you love to fall apart under fingertips. I think you do it on purpose, the way you buy Victoria's Secret to hide your own, the way you sweat and stave and sell your books to buy make-up, the way you carve and construct yourself to be the perfect dimensions, all shiny lips and tan skin and tits and hips and thighs that don't touch when you cross your ankles. You purchase perfection, and you buy sunglasses with glass so dark I can't imagine you can see. I want to reach out and break all the tinted glass in the world, I want shards in your eyes so you will fall in love, really in love, desperately in love. I want to rake my hands down you arms, across your skin. I want to break your skin that way teeth break into plums, I want those strips of paper to fall off. I want to see your bones and pearls again.
But you lounge in the sun until you brown, until your blood is too hot and high in your cheeks for you to eat, until you can't move.
You sit outside all this summer, sinking into vinyl until all there is left is paper over bone. I cannot follow you across courtyards or into taxis anymore. My summer is spent outside at night, in front of stage with a bass that beats my bones to spliters and shards, a bass that beats your pulse out of my blood. Nothing tan, nothing taut, nothing that breaks; I left that with the rain that ran away.