“Open Window” by Amelia Orr

The last of the warm days are a paper bag brown,
tinged with the greens of grass stains,
and the reds that run out of your scraped knees.
They bleed together like a girlhood pact,
blur like the view on a train
headed anywhere but here.
They intertwine, collect, pool
in the tear ducts of my eyes,
in my runaway mouth,
in the palms of my hands.
They whizz past me as dragonflies,
these scorched summer days.
They groan like old floors late into the night,
drone like rain hard against the window,
rumble like your grandfather’s cherry pickup,
bubble like a brook after a thunderstorm,
racing between the rocks, around the bends.
I cup my hands under
washed clean, made anew;
winter’s stain
a mere memory, a murmur
passing, unraveling,
pure time bled out,
spilling all around me.