hot girl summer by Virginia Kane
it is the hottest month on record
in all of human history
so of course i am thinking about your ass
how flawless it looks in skinny jeans
your collarbone & everything
our chapsticked mouths could accomplish
i watch CNN footage of regurgitating smokestacks
read the latest stats on each new way we’ll annihilate
ourselves & know i must be human
because of the way i want
organic avocados imported from Mexico or
girls like you to swipe right on my curated crop top photos
so i invite you to a poetry reading across town
watch you watch the sun burn
through the bookstore window & on the train ride home
you tell me about wildfires ravaging your hometown
a boy who waits for you
eight states away
& i care about California
its three degrees of temperature rise
but it’s not why i lay naked
at three in the morning
sweating sleepless
in an air-conditioned room
though what do i know of the word unprecedented
what of loss labeled irreversible
outside my father mourns his lettuce plants
which drowned yesterday
when a month’s worth of rain
fell in an hour
first the swallows migrated too early
then the drought the size of Europe but
most days it doesn’t feel that hot
most days it feels like any other heat wave because
most days i don’t feel that hot
no VSCO sex doll Insta-baddie porn star
you are not the whole world,
my sister scolds me on the porch so
i guess your tongue in someone else’s mouth
doesn’t spell natural disaster
your goodbye two stops before mine
doesn’t equal species extinction
it is the hottest month on record
in all of human history &
i am not
the world
still i offer myself
to what can’t love me back
gasp when i go up in flames