berry blush and crimson cheeks

by Elizabeth Sallow

peaches and cream, berry-blush: it’s summer and i’m tired.
it’s summer and it’s getting late. it’s summer and i love you
a bit too much. you’re wearing a tennis skirt, pretty pink
with crimson cheeks. how about you come back to mine,
i’ll make us a drink, you can tell me with red wine lips
about what happens when it turns september. when it
starts to turn cold.

wide-eyes, you’re glowing like you’ve never heard of the night sky,
living only under the blush of the sun, under the bird’s applause.
i think you’ve started to realise how i feel: my heart is a
petrol pump, and everything’s a fire hazard. i think you’re
a match. you’re going to ruin me, someday. i tell you this
with grass stains on my palms and you smile, like
i’m fireproof, like i’m never going to burn.

it’s your birthday in july, and it all seems to go wrong:
lavender haze in the fields, the sun’s starting to set and
you’re in a ballgown. you go home with a boy that looks
a little like God, and i stay under the willow until
the moon keeps me company. there is nothing
else to do. there is nothing else to be said.

you leave eventually, spotlights and starlights, you’re
going to massachusetts; you’re going to be a film star. it’s summer
and i’m losing you, it’s summer and i can’t say i’m surprised.
it’s summer and i’m in love. you struck
the match to the box before you left and you lit me up.
burning hands, there’s ash in my lungs. berry blush, cigarette smoke.
i’m in love with an arsonist, i’m in love with a ghost.

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Elizabeth Sallow (she/her) is a queer nineteen year old who lives in a small village in the UK. She believes in the universal and connective power of literature and hopes that she can make people feel understood in a way that she did growing up with her head in a book. Her work has been published in interstellar magazine, dust poetry, and paracosm lit amongst others. You can find her on Instagram @elizabeth.sallow or Twitter @lizabeth_sallow