Fall Parties

I cannot wait for fall parties.
The invitations have begun to roll in.

I used to think I loved summer parties
until they got this year so sweaty and sad,

the whole world away at the shore,
sunk in sweet and salt.

Goodbye, summer: 
you were supposed to save us

from spring but everyone just slumped
into you, sad sacks 

pulling the shade down on an afternoon 
of a few too many rounds. 

Well, I won’t have another.
I’ll have fall. The fall of parties

for no reason, of shivering rooftops,
scuffed boots, scarves with cigarette holes.

I’ll warm your house.
I’ll snort your mulling spices.

I’ll stay too late, I’ll go on a beer run,
I’ll do anything 

to stay in your dimly lit rooms 
scrubbed clean of all their pity.
Credit

Copyright © 2013 by Becca Klaver. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on November 13, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.

About this Poem

"I wrote 'Fall Parties' on September 9th, a date that felt both summery and autumnal. All around me, my friends seemed to have been succumbing to Lana Del Rey's 'Summertime Sadness': we kept showing up at birthday parties, beach parties, roof parties, and barbecues, hoping they would cure us of our ennui, certain each time that this would be the party of the summer. They always fizzled out. Parties can't save us, of course—but this poem holds out hope that they will."
—Becca Klaver