The Salt Leak

The air in the bedroom is thick as a pelt.

The unit is dead, just a hum in the wall.

I feel the slow way that a person can melt

when the summer refuses to break or to fall.

A single hot drop tracks a path through my lash,

stinging the eye while I read what you wrote.

It tastes like the labor of burning to ash,

or the heat of a furnace inside of a throat.

I look in the glass at the dark, damp V

cut into the cotton across my own spine.

It’s just the old work coming back out of me,

the brine of a life that was never quite fine.