Ninety degrees of thick, rude heat — a summer guest
we can’t get rid of — hovering over our city,
our brick house. Yet our son, who’s leaving home
tomorrow, we wish would stay. No AC in his room,
but a window unit in ours for wicked waves like this.
He’s almost eighteen. Can’t sleep, he says, and, though
he’s refused our offer before, now he quickly slips
his mattress onto the floor in our room and plops
down: Six foot five, a man turned back
into a boy before us. The heat, we all keep
saying, it’s awful. In the morning I rise early
and shut off the AC just to hear him breathing.