On the First Good Day of Summer

I spread out, wide and pale, on the hill at the end of the park

and ask the sun to eat me.

A long, well-spent wastoid, cold from years of winter, sick from the hairless dog.

If I cannot turn tan or even red,

then make me the deep dark of the crumbling dirt beneath me—

just don’t make me wait, because the people round here

know what the men on this bench do.

Come here and eat me, and let me burn,

a ghost on fire.

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Nothing, it’s just funny how a little bit of sunshine landing on these buildings can make them look like anything other than the sooty edges of a Victorian ruins. I love them, you know, the little combinations, how the city built over itself so many times. I love the lone-standing tenements left outlaid from the blueprints. I love the wonky roundabouts halfway up the hills. I love the inaccessible shops feigning a high street, three zebra crossings away from everything else. It’s just so easy to be here sometimes. It’s like a little heaven place, a careful helping of everything. It’s a tree planted in the middle of the concrete that turns the whole street green. I don’t want to get too abstract, but we really know how to use our colours. I love you and the fact that I get to show you this place. Yeah, I really do.