It's only July and I'm still young

i woke up in july today. a pale summer clinging onto my ankle like grainy memories; washed to & fro in the subtlety of mid-year waves. half the year gone by, like crushed leaves underfoot — the other half emerging to succumb in solitude.

i'm a woman who sells wilted roses under the rain, hoping for clouds to revive ashes from june. 

a drizzle by morning, a downpour by noon

one gray will cure the other soon.

july showers seem laced with arsenic. but i drank poison before, it tasted like liquid age spilled too young. what am i? to july?

an inanimate foe? or someone who's trying to survive? too old for summer, too far from winter, but this rain has my leaky eyes for heart. 

no one but you. yes you. picking thorns off my bushes, stirring dirt off my tomb…. will you rot with me? under this last summer moon, we can send a message from afterlife. 

a momentary winter would climb like roses up our assimilated spine — it's barely summer and our bone’s growing fungus now. 

july keeps me high on clouds and marijuana, like a senile bitch. it's red on my lips but you're always dressed in blue. this blunt ache of solitude, was never meant for you. 

i'm sorry. i gave myself ice burn in july, lost your warmth from june. 

it was summer i ran away from, for winter as quiet as snow. it was bad poetry i gulped at night, for morning as blank before the ink flows. 

but i woke up in july instead. a trailing summer drowning in metaphors, so goes my ashes, so goes my rage. i'm but a tame lamb under this rain — away from knives, closer to blood. pebbles in my pocket, puddle in my shoe. 

july. july. july.

i'm still young,

so let me cry.

august in a blink, september's deadline. i'm yet to touch october, i'm yet to die. november witness, i'm too young to be reborn. 

it's only july and i'm still young.

say december, is it too early? is it too warm?