My heart started kicking
in the sweltering summer tempests,
after the sun had melted
frozen eyes
and the buds had unfolded
from renewed fingertips.

When winter dies
leftover clumps of resentment
sink into the green earth,
defeated,
and with the burst of daybreak
spring explodes in every unborn soul
and sends them weeding their way
into the world.

But those of us awoken
in the off-season
c r u m b l e
when lukewarm rains empty
from thawing clouds
and trickle through the cracks
from skin-splitting winds,

they flood our haggard roots
that wilt under the
pressure of a bustling world,
and they send us chasing
after the remnants of our
shattered souls,
when all we can do is
hide the moldering pieces
in tattered pockets.

We patch dead beat hearts
up against our flesh, quivering
until swallowed by
callousness

and step over the rain
streaming from our
copper-stained eyes--
distress had rusted over their gleam
by the first week of April.

The months inch on painfully
into the springtide.
but we wait for the storms of August
to wash us anew.