Poetry: (Post-) Scarcity

By Rachel Linton

Photo by Valdemaras D. via Upsplash.

Summer is both a time and a place--

the sort of combination

grouped under “setting” in the first pages of the script,

or drowning the novel in words like

‘golden’ and ‘freedom’ and ‘heat’--

a concept impractically large,

too big to fit properly in memory,

too scarce to live in

forever.

If time travel were possible, midsummer

would be overbooked, everyone wanting

to relive the fireworks, the drip of the ice cream cone,

the sun sparkling on the water. Of course,

you can’t go back, but you

knew that,

right?

That’s how the seasons preserve their value;

no inflation, no redos. Just you,

and the memory of sunlight,

and the promise of the tilting planet

that it will, someday,

return.