A Poem For When The Air Conditioner Has Stopped Working

The air conditioner upstairs
has stopped working.
It is August,
your windows are open,
and it is hot.
You lie on the floor of your bedroom
trying not to move.
If you move, you sweat,
so you lie still.
The breeze that sweeps through your open window
offers little relief,
but it brings with it something familiar.
It brings the scent of soft grass and lazy afternoons.
The bright, hot stillness of the last few days of summer,
the melancholy feeling that something is ending.
It brings your mind back to other days spent in this slow heat,
to books read while lying on your stomach atop your bed
with your feet in the air.
To stories full of adventure and love and the girl you used to be,
who used to read them
and believe them.
A girl who loved the smell of open windows and warm breezes,
who lived her life by the pages of books she read in summer.
You lie still in the heat of your bedroom,
remembering this girl
you thought you had lost.
But every now and then
(if you're lucky) 
you find her.
In the pages of the books you read.
In the smell that wafts through an open window in late summer.
In the heat of your bedroom on a Sunday in August.
And tomorrow a man is coming to fix the air conditioner.

-Samantha Lee