Doorjamb

First published at Bandit.

Doorjamb
Chris Cocca

In the summer, when school was over,
we picked mulberries in the yard
and spun in circles on the grass.
It was soft and living, warm on our bare feet,
and every day the sun was lightening your hair.
Your mom, she was playing Brian Wilson, and we listened to his brothers intervene. 

In the summer, when we were older,
we smoked kreteks in the street
and the road between your mom’s house and the lake was painted by the moon. 
It was grey and broken, a hubcap glinted in the switchgrass
cracking through the shoulder. 
Our friends, almost at the water, crashed and laughed
against the tyranny of neighbors.

In the fall, when you had gone, 
I struggled doing pull-ups in the doorjamb,
and the attic smelled like pine and lemon. 
I was thinking of all you’d written on the blue path of my forearm
on the grey road to the lake
the pale night you first squared the pattern of my breathing
and began the long division of your forehead and my shoulder.