The Boys of Summer

It was a one trick town, I told you, but you shrugged, said you’d been tricked before. Let your wheels spin dust at the edge of the lot where you waited for me. I was world weary already, even though I’d never left. Slipped in shotgun with an armload of popsicles and a jug of Domaine D’Or. Wondered if you’d kiss me or grope at my thigh. Once I booked an appointment with the school shrink, cried, asked her if anyone would ever touch me. She said, one day you’ll think about this meeting and laugh, you’ll have had so many lovers. I didn’t think the years would go by, that I would blink and be fifty. No one does. After school I would vacuum my grandmother’s room for a five spot, then sit at her swollen feet with a plate of stale cookies and listen to her lamentations. The summer was almost gone and you hadn’t yet made a move at me. I doused myself in Love’s Baby Soft, showed up with hash in hopes of hurrying things along. You didn’t bite, and I was worried.  You think you won’t find love, Oma said once, pushing her ivory white brush through long and oily silver tresses. But the real story is how it is so fleeting. 

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Lorette C. Luzajic is an artist, writer, and editor living in Toronto, Canada. Her poetry and flash have been widely published, in books, in anthologies, and in hundreds of print and online journals around the world. She is the founder of The Ekphrastic Review, a journal devoted to writing inspired by art.

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