…that summer and the swollen pregnant heat, when Isa and I would walk around the house in our underwear and spend our water bill in the cavities of those hard plastic ice trays, that summer when I had two jobs and there was no poetry left in me by sundown, that summer when we’d keep the windows cracked open and every Saturday the dirt bikers would roar down the road and rattle all of our mismatched kitchenware, that summer I let seashells collect on the bathroom window, that summer I broke the wheels of my parents’ best suitcase bringing thirty-five books back to the library, that summer I waited for you to drive up to me on the weekends, that summer I started a fire by the lake and all of my clothes smelled like smoke and clean tobacco, that summer the man started following me, that summer the shape of my body changed, remember that one?
— Lucy TonThat
Illustration by Cate Roser