-This poem reflects on a sunburn line as a small bodily record of high summer, where pleasure, labor, and exposure leave their mark together.
By evening on the shoulder’s curve,
the skin remembers where the sun,
lay longest through the open hours,
and left its quiet border there.
A red along the edge of sleeve,
a warmth that lingers after light,
the body keeping one last trace,
of all the day refused to shade.
No wound is in so slight a mark,
yet still it speaks of limit, measure,
how even joy, and field, and work,
can press too long against the flesh.
So much of high summer writes this,
not only in fruit, but in skin,
the season leaving on the body,
a line between delight and cost.