Iced Tea (2013)

*note: this poem was written for a boy who ended up abusing and destroying me. I wanted to post this to show how deeply you can love someone when you have no idea how they're slowly changing and molding you into someone who's complicit in their own abuse.

i’m drinking iced tea

out of a bottle

and i’m thinking, wow

what an unspeakable shame

that i can’t be drinking iced tea

out of a glass. what a shame

i’m thinking, that i’m not sitting

in a lawn chair inhaling the dry

aroma of perfumed air

and the caress of

an oncoming

sunburn

on a mild day

perhaps a tuesday

morning in tuscan, arizona,

sunkissed fingers twisted into

the auburn and strawberry

curls of your ginger hair

and my other hand on

a glass of iced tea.