The summer ripens like raccoon
molars in the sun, jamming up 
the bike wheel brake because

heat has nothing to lose.

I haven’t spent a June without sweat
behind my ears since I was thirteen
years old, lost in the haze

of a rinse and repeat life. I suppose
in some ways, time has wrapped around
itself, a divine spiral of incense smoke
that sticks to sky blue walls.

However, this house is quiet at night,
scattered remains of life shoved
into the closet to be undone once
the hills call the ghosts in my memory

to return. The angel of death

has made a home in the attic. I swear,
the first time I saw it, white feathers caught
in the light fractals bleeding from the window,
I thought it was flying. But, it’s tethered in place

with fishing wire, stuck in this rural hell
as I am, till starvation hollows out
the eyes on its wings. I know it’ll be gone

once it’s nothing but a pile of film strips
and cigarette ash on the wood grain.
That’ll be the day I’ll finish off the Jaeger.