Summer with my Mother

She tells me to come back,
back into the rubbery shade,
that I'll be burnt soon
and won't know freckle from skin.

She seeps in the shade and
when she sweats, you can smell
the milk from her pores.

She keeps her sun glasses
trained on me and only adjusts
when the shadows recede
exposing her thin white feet,
to the consequence of sunlight.

At night she's an unnatural
moon, buffed to an indigo,
too bare and clear like
peeled skin from my
blistered shoulders,

like everything the sun
should shed off.