We spent that summer on the porch. You read me poems-
William Carlos Williams- and we talked about plums like the day
would never end. In the evenings, we drank until we forgot about form,
thank God. We forgot just long enough to remember the feeling. 

I think it rained that entire summer. At least that’s how I remember it.
The air was wet and thick as the skin of a plum. Mold grew everywhere it could-
in the cracks in the floorboards, in the mailbox with the spider-mother,
between the pages of the poems you read to me on the porch.

All summer, we were together. You read me William Carlos Williams,
drawing in breaths of plum-skin air between each line. I memorized the shape
your mouth made whenever you finished a poem and I could not help
but feel like crying; please forgive me. 

It all seemed so sweet
and so cold.

Natalie Mau is a current MFA candidate with a concentration in poetry at Georgia College and State University, where she also currently reads submissions for Arts & Letters literary journal. She is a three-time finalist for the Margaret Harvin Wilson writing award and is currently working on her first poetry collection. When she is not writing, Natalie can be found working in her garden, taking a walk through town with her wife, or enjoying a cup of coffee on her front porch.