I think this works

1976

It is the hottest summer. Peach juice sprays
to cheeks and lips if I so much as lick
at sun-warmed skin that's not even as thick
as tissue paper. It's been hot for days

and weeks. I'm sitting just outside the room
where Pat is dying. She is going through
her list of close friends who need talking to.
She's almost got to me. A sense of doom

hangs. And some day soon the heat will break.
Right now, no clouds. I sit beside the bed.
You know almost precisely what she said,
that I'd been drifting, and now had to wake

be honest, unafraid, must change and grow,
and be the woman that she'd never know