come smoke cigarettes with me forever

Basic August, Eileen Myles

bpd this major depression that...i have wanting too much out of life disorder

a short story I started but haven’t finished

I began to talk. I talked about summer, and about time. The pleasures of eating, the terrors of the night. About this cup we call a life. About happiness. And how good it feels, the heat of the sun between the shoulder blades.

to shreds, you say

literally whatever, wherever, whenever. Just saying.

I dream of how I was running late & had to sprint at least five June-hot city blocks in order to meet you. I dream of how we walked (me a bit breathless & sweaty) into a little café together & right away got so caught up in talking I didn’t even think to order a drink till much later you reminded me, Did you want to get something to drink? & I felt so grateful to you, that you would cease being so interesting for a moment & give me the chance to get up because I was indeed very thirsty.

It was past closing time when we left the café & wandered into the park—Yes, I said, Let’s sit here & we sat there, a bench, a place on this earth for maybe five people at most though everyone knows it’s really just for two people at a time, that’s why benches were made & when they’re not serving their purpose they are rained upon & look more miserable than a child who has suddenly dropped her ice cream on the pavement. But how un-miserably we kissed, how the lamplight made everything the most anti-despondent green. The trees, the grass, the benches—our bench—all greenly awake, as we kissed & kissed. I’m dreaming,

yes, on the train heading home, that our kiss, the last before we parted, has yet to end, not entirely—that I’m carrying the sweet ghost of that kiss on my lips, while on your train, you carry it, too. Let’s say it takes all night for us to get home, the train having to make every stop, & everyone forgetting to step off the first, even second times, while we’re still kissing that kiss, that green, & June

— Chen Chen, “I Dream on a Crowded Subway Train with My Eyes Open But My Body Swaying”

Sharon Olds, from "Her Last August"

Roman fresco, Flora, Pompeii, 1st Century A.D., National Archaeological Museum, Naples, source

Joan Didion, South and West

Everything is so hyper real in the summer time