it always happens around the same time
even when it’s raining with heavy clouds
I can feel the evening sun push through
the hazy, heavy, horrible muck
carrying the sharp cut
of nostalgia and ruin
of her and how we became a neon
flash that grew and blossomed
spilling out and redefining
who I am
exposed 
unafraid

but those can’t match
when I was fishing out the coldest 
Pepsi’s I ever drank from my father’s
work cooler
while getting him another beer
I can still remember how he smelled
sitting on the picnic table with a cigarette;
sweat and blood and tar
and the white-gold pure heat of the sun
while he told stories and laughed 
the time when I still believed
that he loved me

or when I was on the southern coast
with the hard-edged heat masked 
in the coconut wafting off those women
that would walk by with their sun hats
and I wished to taste the salt off their 
shoulders
that place where I believed that 
the more I visited
that my entire family was 
enamored and transformed
in a sad way because none of them
knew that they weren’t meant 
for that kind of place
and I wasn’t meant 
for my mother
because I wasn’t that kind of kid

or the sick and broken feeling
that I got while deep in a hollow
right after a heavy rain
with the orange sun struggling
to find passage through the
heavy
green 
leaves
stood in a patch of wild Easter lilies
while the insects started back up
their chorus and the night shift
of animals started to move
I watched 
that 
old 
bitch
gather those flowers up
in those gnarled hands so gently
knowing what she did to me
knowing what she would do to me
but unable to be smart enough
to figure out how to escape
from the whole thing
besides killing myself 
or her

so when I say Summer is my favorite
still seems a little confusing
by my god
the what could be
is better than the 
what has been

all ghosts
all gone
just like 
parts of me