Summer

In my mind there has always been a particular house with a lake nearby. I can smell the summer woods all around. Green leaves fat with late season liquor. I only know there is a lake because I can occasionally hear lake birds, a subtle lapping of water edge, but mostly I can feel the overwhelming damp in the blankets across my legs, nearly drenched with lake moisture. The humid air has me drunk when I wake in the morning, unable to focus or completely open my eyes. There is jasmine out in front, hanging from places along the roof of the screened porch.

This is not my house. Was not my house. In fact, it is no house I have ever known, but it is the thing I get in my head as familiar as my own skin.