I spent the whole summer standing in the door frame of the back porch, smoking. Outside, the sun baked the steel landing and steps, and the trip down to the garden, wilting yet overgrown, seemed pointless.
The coneflower refused to stand, but the deep yellow rockets stared heavenward the whole time, like a children's choir. The saturated color against the grey-green and cobwebbed background drew my attention, hypnotically.
Something is wrong with my chemistry, and all summer I pawed at rashes and turned the black rubber of my clarinet mouthpieces into toffee—sentinels declaiming trouble at the center. Yet the symptoms disappeared on a brief trip north, as if home itself were my disease.
A watched pot never boils.
This August belonged to Samuel Beckett, the bard of ennui. It seemed like a droll stage play, relieved only by the small white butterflies coupling and uncoupling in midair, or the Monarchs gracing the tops of the ironweed, their wings delicately scissoring.
I think I have downloaded every version of Honeysuckle Rose there is. I started a diet. I started Look Homeward, Angel. I kept modelling the clay of this summer, of this age, of this life, waiting for a scalp or a nose to emerge. But the facts persist in their banality, prolific but worthless—crabgrass on a flagstone walk.
Every honey bee fills with jealousy
When they see you out with me
I don't blame them, goodness knows
Honeysuckle rose.
When you're passin' by
Flowers droop and sigh
And I know the reason why
You're much sweeter, goodness knows
Honeysuckle rose.
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