All Summer Long

I long for those warm summer nights spent sitting in the dark on your old leather couch, legs sticking to the worn-out surface; sweat pools in the hollow of my back. It’s much too hot to sleep in bed, so we stay up and talk, talk to each other all night long, cross-legged in our underwear and soaked-through cotton shirts. You tell me of your day, your job, your colleagues—those all too familiar tragedian actors—and their foolish routine misadventures. You bring their day-old squabbles back to life with language overwrought and flowing, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, had he had but an ordinary office job, and I hang onto your lips and drink deep from your rippling words as I try to scry those deep dark crystal pools that are your eyes—too dark now to descry, wrapped as they are and blanketed in murky night. And all I do is listen, make you talk with greedy questions, bidding you to keep that endless river pouring forth and anytime I ask for more—what did you do? what happened then?—, I hear faint giggles gurgling, bubbling, burbling within those waters cool and clear and feel your words like salty sea spray dusting fresh and cool my face, endlessly, all summer long.