This was a time when life was splattered,
decorated with chocolate ice cream,
melting under the gaze of summer,
streaming down sidewalks in rivulets
until
it was absorbed like paper takes ink.

No child knew then the significance of ink
when our dreams were splattered
and we didn't know their impossibilities until
all of the ice cream
we would lick, and the rivulets
we would splash in, were dead and gone; the end of summer.

Youth is a phase like summer
that fades over time, unless ink
can save it as rivulets
save the water that is splattered
from your first fishbowl. Ice cream's
taste can be recorded and remembered. That is, until

Writers forget how to write. Until
nobody remembers how hot it was in summer,
and old-time memories of cones of ice cream
are too insignificant to waste ink.
The once rich taste has melted, and memories are splattered
down upon the floor, washed away in rivulets.

Such things may seem like rivulets
next to an ocean. Until
your life has splattered
apart, thin on a white bed, and you wish for summer
again. And you reach for but cannot find anymore ink.
It's bitter to lose memories, like the aftertaste of ice cream.

Your bones are ice cream;
little by little, sweetness swept away in rivulets.
If memories have been saved in bottles of ink,
you may pour them out until
you feel the heat of summer
on your chilled skin. Thoughts splattered

across pages, ice cream hands shake until
the rivulets of blood, unlike summertime,
turn thinner than ink. And your life is splattered.