and you used to be The Richard Bey Show 
and my sister’s spaghetti. Under a friar plum tree, 
a simplified reading of “The Argonautica.”
You kept me full and entertained. I was that kind 
of round child. Gorging on what was left over. 
I didn’t want a real burden, my own ship or story. 
I didn’t want to go on ahead. I didn’t want to 
have to reverse into you. Into your apparatus. 
I never wanted nostalgia. We used to know each other,
remember? Dry. Humid. Dry. Humid. 
Not. Humid. Dry. Humid. Dry. Humid. Dry.
Why did we have to pry open our patch of dirt? 
Why couldn’t you always be acid wash
or those I CAN’T DRIVE 55 posters at the swap meet 
or sunglasses. I never wanted to lay questions around 
you. What if he takes another this year? What if 
he’s difficult to talk my way out of? What if he eats me 
only half-alive? What if all he is in his beach bum
orange is ghosts clothespinned to the laundry line?

Copyright © 2023 by Gustavo Hernandez. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 8, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“I used to be a summer guy. Not uncommon for us to throw a season into our personalities, right? One we identify with more than the others. I hated winter. Couldn’t wait for the cold (mild as it is in California) to lift. I’m no longer a summer guy. Loss has concentrated there. Too many ninety-degree funerals. Too many novenas in houses struggling to breathe. I still think about it, though. How good it made me feel. But I have questions, and this poem is part of that interrogation. A run-in with that friend who’s done me wrong.”
—Gustavo Hernandez