You wanted to paint me flowers on the side of my daddy’s old shed, the one he tried to raise up like the sister I always wanted. But then his body gave up on him. Or he gave up on it. You once promised to help him. That’s what made him like you. What made me start to love you.

You climbed up the side of my house and tapped my window twice. In the bed of your truck, you only had black paint like you only had cinnamon-flavored gum instead of spearmint, pictures instead of movies. I watched your light blue shirt pool navy at the bottom of your back as you painted a rose whose leaves splayed more like a tulip with slick skinny stems. In the heat, the black paint melted wet streaks down the side of the shed. Like mascara running.

You knelt and signed your initials under, then mine. When you were done, you stood up and dusted grass off your knees. Something about the way you stepped back to look at what you’d made felt final – like my daddy shutting off the stove top fan after frying something up for dinner, his kitchen’s closing call. You turned around. You were looking past me, not at me, not in the eyes, and I remembered that earlier, you kept only kissing my cheek. That I had to ask for a real one.

“Looks like the wall’s crying,” I said and felt a cold inside me. Like I just knew but wouldn’t let myself believe that it’d be last time I’d watch you make something out of nothing.

“Or bleeding,” you said back.

I loved it and every other mess you made. You, my heart’s latest vandal.

That was last summer. You left in April. Kissed me one last time, again, because I asked. You said that things weren’t working. You were sorry. I wondered which things. How many of them there might be. If it would hurt more or less to ask you to count them all.

My daddy’s been asking when I’m going to take the ladder down. Reminds me his back is no good for that kind of work anymore. My answer is always tomorrow, and then I pretend tomorrow doesn’t come and hold my breath until a noise like sugar flies buzzing starts to rattle in my head. As if I by keeping enough of myself in, the missing will stop. Sometimes, I almost pass right out, waiting for you. To make sense of the heat. The gnaw of need. Sometimes, I still hear you climbing to the top of my roof and calling down for me to join you, laughing as we rust-footed to nowhere. Our sweet creak of summer. Sometimes, I imagine you realize you were wrong about not loving me.

Fool I am. It’s August, but even my daddy’s linden trees know. Summer is over. They’re shrinking into themselves, curling toward what’s left of moisture, ready to brace the lack.