Summer Sins

At August’s end

we will peel off layers

of sunburned skin.

This way I don’t have to

confess my summer sins.

I’ll just shed them, snakelike;

let them roll off my body

and litter the ground.

These flakes of skin

can be mistaken for ashes.

The deep gash on my knee

bled darkly over the sidewalk.

My blood sizzled on its hot,

gray face like skillet grease.

But then October cools.

The pavement and everyone’s blood

begins to drop in degrees,

allowing us to breathe in the cold

and blow out its smoke.

Then I think about every October

I’ve lived through, twenty-two in all.

My earliest memory was in that month.

We had a mutt-dog; I wanted to touch him

because he wasn’t like any other dog,

but he bit me even though he knew

I didn’t want to hurt him.

When we get older we don’t see

the beauty in such things.

We see the past and its ghosts,

walking before us, still

pretending to be alive.

We wonder where

all the beauty has gone.

For myself, I cannot say

that I know where it ends up

because I am getting older

and the beauty has trailed off

with the fading, burnt-orange

October afternoon.

So we begin to wish

that we might again be warm-blooded;

so August can scorch our skin

because we’ll just shed it again.