Summer afternoons are spent on the block, watching people line up at the corner to eat meat rolled into food blankets. We hide behind house silhouettes, sneak inhales of marijuana between passing cars. When it’s hot, we run to the paletero, plead for ice to grace our tongues, and turn our lips blue. We drive up to city night lights and gaze at existence below us and listen to baby coyotes whisper behind caves in the burned hills.
Sometimes I’m not on the block. I’m in an abandoned house with a boy I think I love. The ghost of the family that used to live there watches us sip Arizona Tea kisses between our tongues. A haunting of recklessness. Friday nights are howls beneath bus stops, walking under street lamps and meeting friends on the patio of a house full of dirt listening to beer bottles chime against gravel while eyes wander to a saguaro cactus at the end of the yard.
Clamor 