"Scorch" by Sarah Little

Summer sun burns down:

clothes feel too heavy for comfort. The air tastes humid,

breezes brushing wet over skin.

You’d scorch from the sun

alone, feel your skin going

pink, then later stiff

with a burn.

You’d feel the pink.

And with him: you scorch

under his gaze,

the embodiment of what

want looks like.

It’d encompass you.

Sweep over you, same way

you feel the heat of a thermos-brewed tea blazing down your

morning-dry throat.

(before too long, you pray for winter)

When she’s not browsing through stacks of books or watching mysteries, Sarah Little is a poet and sometimes story-teller. Her first poetry pamphlet was "Snapshots" (Broken Sleep Books, 2019) and most recently she's been exploring fairy-tale motifs while branching out into fiction. Her most recent publications have been pieces in Cypress Journal, Mineral Lit, and Perhappened, among others.