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Nights It Was Too Hot to Stay in the Apartment By Lyn Lifshin We drove to the lake, then stopped at my grandmother's. The grownups sat in the screened porch on wicker or the glider whispering above the clink of ice in wet glass. Spirea and yellow roses circled the earth under stars. A silver apple moon. Bored and still sweaty, my sister and I wanted to sleep out on the lawn and dragged out our uncle's army blankets and chairs for a tent. We wanted the stars on our skin, the small green apples to hang over the blanket to protect us from bats. From the straw mats, peonies glowed like planets and if there was a breeze, it was roses and sweat. I wanted our white cats under the olive green with us, their tongues snapping up moths and whatever buzzed thru the clover. For an hour the porch seemed miles away until itchy with bug bites and feeling our shirts fill with night air, my hair grow curlier, our mother came to fold up the blankets and chairs and I wished I was old enough to stay alone until dawn or small enough to be scooped up, asleep in arms that would carry me up the still hot apartment stairs and into sheets I wouldn't know were still warm until morning © Copyright 2004, Lyn Lifshin, All Rights Reserved. |
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Document last modified on: 09/28/2004