we could never sync up

in the long summer months—

you liked the beach, i like the lake,

you hate the heat, i enjoy the breeze.

the only summer routine we got right

was going to that one ice cream shoppe,

the one with green wooden tables

and bulbous string lights and a band

that played every saturday.

there’s also a vintage candy stand

in the back but it doesn’t want its patrons

to know about that. i always order chocolate.

you always ordered a cappuccino instead.

i’d beg and i’d beg and i’d beg

you to indulge, just once, but you’d refuse,

shunning me like i was judas. when we got

back in the car i’d cry and wish things

were different although i’d never experienced

them being any different. my mom would say

the grass isn’t always greener

on the other side, so i shouldn’t wish

for unprecedented change, but hell,

at least on the other side, the grass is alive,

where here it is dead. it’s not about

which shade is greener, it’s about which one

you’d feel better stepping

on because it hasn’t already been killed.

and the summer is supposed to be a time

of green grass and ice cream and hot sweaty

bodies nuzzling into each other like melting

butter but even in the highest of fahrenheits

you are frigid. and i’m so used to you freezing

me out that when winter comes

i can still stomach walking on dead grass.

for five years i stowed myself in your ice-box

heart longing to be lodged there forever

because some warmer version of me saw

a future with you, for no other reason than that

i loved you. yes, i loved you, to a point

of hypothermic suffocation and maybe that’s why i eat ice cream all the time.

but now that you’re gone

i can’t help but hope that without me

your cappuccinos don’t taste as sweet.