Sign Language

[dukealien]

               Sign Language
  
I carry empty bottles on my fingers
to the outside trash hearing country music
from my neighbor's truck, in the cool air,
and wonder where summer has gone,
and why aloneness is so sweet yet so hard.

Hearing the hoot of an owl so strange,
and so rare that close to the house,
in my proud superstitions, I pray
for forgiveness for family arguments
as I lay in bed for hours.

Then the warmth in the school library
brings a comfort; riding home past
the warmly lit YMCA at night,
summer is probably there at that moment,
warm and laughing in water.

But I, born under Cancer,
was meant to bear cold things,
only train my pincers and appreciate my shell.
Why do I seek rare feeling only
in desire so wicked and strange?

A shivery ride, particularly toward the end.  I tripped slightly on "lay," thinking (pedantically) that it should be "lie" since the rest of the sentence is present tense.  But against that, "lie" would introduce an issue of truthfulness as well as losing the internal rhyme with "pray."  The idea certainly gets across better this way.

Great images - bottles on fingers, wicked crab.