“After scolding one’s cat one looks into its face and is seized by the ugly suspicion that it understood every word. And has filed it for reference.”- Charlotte Gray

As promised:

Charleston

The stickiness of the heat stings me, clings to me, brings me

to the brink of insanity. My vanity scourged by the sea

and the fickle clouds of rain. Inane drops of rain that creep

across the sunrise, sprinkling through the hints of sun that seep

into my smile. Dark, angry, the sky and the waves, cresting

white on muddy sand. The yellow shutters still resting

open, waiting to be slammed. The spotted rainbow homes,

a pastel patchwork quilt—obstinate to the jilted poems

uttered by the wind. Their specks of brightness swallowed

by angry gray. Every ray of sunshine melting into hallowed

thunder. It brims, sky dims, the heat of the ocean in my nose,

the salt in my hair, the sand under nails. And time has froze.