Endless summer.

The sun doesn't sleep on this side of the world.

Fire.
Fire through my windows in the morning, fire through my eyelids in the afternoon, burning,
reminding me that there is no rest. There is never any rest.

I get on my knees at night and beg for rain. I beg for the color gray,
gray like the dinner dress draped across my lanky bones. Gray like the color I pull over my head before I go to sleep.
Gray hangs on my walls. It buries itself in the musty folds of my curtains.
It wraps itself around my waist.
I wear it well.

I'll hide some in my closet, in my drawers. I'll collect it until the day I have enough.
Enough to douse the angry flames in the sky,
to paint clouds, to paint fog, to paint rain.


And I will sleep.