wet tired justwrite

I press my fist against my sternum and know that my body is a locket full of photographs. I remember how my mother's tears could have flooded the basement again while she peeled our soggy smiles out of albums and pinned them onto strings like white sheets waiting for wind on a Saturday afternoon clothes line. I think about lines melting into each other and how streetlights fan outward at night, as if my eyes are watering like they do when I try to watch the sun move across the sky, horizon to horizon, predictable, a heartbeat beneath my palm, my pulse keeping me up at night, reminding me that nothing beneath my skin is ever still. My little brother has outgrown me twice, but I remember singing to him the song I learned in chorus until he fell asleep just before my favorite verse. I remember taking showers with him because he was afraid to be alone, washing his back with a green washcloth, drinking from the shower head while he laughed. I remember how white his hair was in the summer, thin corn silk fanning up from his cowlick like light. It's almost summer again. My skin is aching for sun and my throat is thirsty for home, creek water swallowed accidentally, iced tea and blueberries, the damp Bay breeze. I want to sweat so much I become water, evaporating into the still August air, my edges blurred, my body dropping stacks of soggy photographs onto the grass.