Summer Stock, Alexander Fayne (June 2026)
Summer Stock
Here in the sun-crushed
semi-dark, it’s strange
to think that, at this moment, other girls
about my age are slouching by the pool,
and sprawling on his lap, and drinking beer,
and scrawling notes in paperbacks, and dating.
Drugged up in this hot
curtained kitchen, waiting
for something or for nothingness, I hear
the sounds they told me would remain at school:
their music’s muffled thuds, the whooping calls…
No use in writing out Nothing has changed.
Not much ever has. Feeling
its glow
in unsurprised astonishment, I eat,
then hurry to the upstairs loo and purge,
and smoke, and type out squibs, and thank the Lord
for walls and window-blinds and double-glazing.
Nothing has changed. And yet
it seems amazing
that summer this year came without a word,
that, when it did, the once-attendant surge—
this year, I’ll use it!—didn’t. I retreat,
to think that, at this moment, other girls
about my age are slouching by the pool,
and sprawling on his lap, and drinking beer,
and scrawling notes in paperbacks, and dating.
for something or for nothingness, I hear
the sounds they told me would remain at school:
their music’s muffled thuds, the whooping calls…
No use in writing out Nothing has changed.
in unsurprised astonishment, I eat,
then hurry to the upstairs loo and purge,
and smoke, and type out squibs, and thank the Lord
for walls and window-blinds and double-glazing.
that summer this year came without a word,
that, when it did, the once-attendant surge—
this year, I’ll use it!—didn’t. I retreat,
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