SOMEDAY I’LL LOVE SUMMER AGAIN
by ADELAIDE SENDLENSKI
Summer boiled in its brittle shell. Dad left no forwarding address. Tire marks streaked our front lawn yellow until the gods finally cried. I couldn’t peel the meat from the lobster; I couldn’t crack its armor. Mum said lobsters can’t feel pain. As she cooked, I watched papaya-seed eyes pop in the boiling water. A lobster’s pain was the absolute value of its need to escape. Maybe dad’s was, too. A man in a blue shirt hammered a for sale sign into the mouth of wilting hydrangeas. Mum milked tears from her drywater eyes. The hydrangeas were once her pride and joy. I rode my bike everywhere and nowhere. I pedalled as hard as I could, until the trees raced backwards. I pedalled until the sky stood still and I gasped for air. Plump cherries in plastic sleeves filled our fridge. I loved cherries, the sting of their sweetness. They dyed my teeth purple, left the rims of my nails sweet. But I couldn’t bring myself to eat any. I couldn’t stand the spat-out seeds and the bellyache. I wished for winter, for numb fingers and brittle nights of rimy solitude. I wished for everything that was not, until we packed a rubbish bag full of not anymore: his rough brown flips flops, faded t-shirts still damp with memories. Mum and I drove to the Salvation Army in watery silence. After, I lay in his empty closet and clung to the i love you he muttered as his car rolled away. He rolled away like a marble down a drain. It was hopeless, so I swam in the ocean. I sold the salt of my sadness to the Atlantic. Floating on my back, I prayed for the ocean to swallow me whole. That night, I dreamt I was a baby cradled in a lobster trap.
Adelaide Sendlenski was born in New York and raised in Sydney, Australia. Her poetry has been featured in The Slowdown and recognized as a National Scholastic Gold Medalist for Writing Portfolio, as a National YoungArts Winner, and as a New York State and New York City Youth Poet Laureate Finalist. Her emerging literary magazine, The Antigone Project, empowers a range of young adult voices in the Classics. She also runs a program at the Brooklyn Public Library, MythoKids, which fuses mythology and literacy for elementary school children.
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