(algarve)

today you smell like a day spent
in a foreign supermarket, while outside
it is threatening
to rain. and my parents are upset

because all they ask is that i am
happy for this two weeks, but two weeks
seems a long time: i am eleven
and i have only thought

twice about sex –
as an idea, without its own smell –
and somewhere, ten years ago, you
are not quite yourself

and I am not yet
fascinated by thunder

Karl Smith