Aphelion

January knocked me breathless. It

rushed in thick with melancholy and

heavy with fatigue, with cold and corrosion.

It gifted sharp-chilled winds on the

water's surface, reaching for the shore

out of desperation, branches plucked clean

and grass turned brittle—my gaze pulled

low like the clouds to the dew; the fog

made heavy like disillusionment. I cannot

romanticize the ocean, anymore, now

that the sun refuses to tint it gold, now

that it freezes me to the bone. The

dulled grays of dawn paint me softer

than beaches now colored bone-white and

beaches now burying the last remains of a hundred humid reveries. Behind my eyelids

sits the blood-red tinge of an August ghost.

I barely remember what it was like to burn,

how it felt to live blistered, the scrape of

sand across my skin so bruised and

branded by brutal, solstice sunbeams.

This hole in my chest can only be filled

by the coming of June, by gilded peace.

This wound only heals by being cauterized,

and only Apollo’s light may touch me.