by Jack Smith
he is beside you dreaming of a wide and crowded peach field, that you are picking peaches and your arm is getting sore, that you are wearing his old shoes and in them you look taller. he tells you this while you are both asleep the tractor pulls a wide wood flatbed under a few lines of laundry and up a long and gentle hill. you whisper something to the peach, place it next to his ear. you said something so truthful. he tells you this while you are both asleep he makes a wish for more time. very simple, nothing special, but handsome in that thought. you feel suddenly like childhood friends driving slowly uphill. he inhales the whisper and exhales the water of the peach.
Jack Smith is an Ottawa-based writer and artist, currently struggling through their master’s in Creative Writing at Cambridge University. At the time of writing their piece, they were living as a resident at a Zen temple in the (lower) mountains of New Mexico, so the theme of “elevation” was very present in their life. “In Late July” speaks to the memory of love that is elevating rather than purely nostalgic.
Headlight Anthology 