Drenched in August

It was the summer the river swelled past its name,

your voice was a matchstrike - brief, then gone.

I remember the porch sagging under the weight

of stories we didn’t tell,

and the thunder in your knuckles

when you touched the doorframe but didn’t knock.

You had a shoebox full of letters

you never meant to send.

I knew because you let them burn

in the backyard grill,

smoke curling up like cursive regrets.

There were peaches on the windowsill.

They softened,

over days we didn’t speak,

and the wasps came,

drawn to what was left sweet.

You said August always made you restless.

I said nothing,

because I didn’t want you to know

I was already packing you

into the back of my mind -

half myth, half migraine.

Now, every time it rains in heat,

I smell you in the sidewalk steam

a ghost of citrus and cut grass.

And that’s the thing about memory:

it never asks permission

to stay.

It just sits beside you

while the storm begins again.