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amaryllis


by Jerry Ratch


 

On such warm nights when wet sex happens suddenly, please, remember the amaryllis. How they'll push up out of the ground in August after the first real heat opens the air. I too was born in such weather.

 

Balmy nights when heat lightning beats in the dark sky like oil under a bruise, and heat-seeking insects light on our mixture of human soils. These are memory's only gifts.

 

Pause awhile now, be kind enough to remember your own young soul like the amaryllis, as I will, when time had no beginning, nor a middle, and nowhere near an end.

 

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