Maggie Waller
don’t you remember it?
the constant buzzing –
cicadas infesting the trees while
we lost our concept of time
and touched our sweaty foreheads
right to the grass?
do you remember?
how the smell of chlorine bleached even our winter sweatshirts
sunscreen sandy stench spreading through the house,
while mom reminded us to wash our feet off at least two times before
coming to the dinner table?
no really,
do you?
i mean,
do you remember scraped knees and bruised elbows and
laughing so hard we couldn’t catch our
fuckin breath?
and
do you remember mosquito bites on novel skin –
proliferating?
that’s to say,
do you remember finding the authentic native american arrowhead while
hiking piestewa peak with michaela’s 79-year old grandfather?
do you remember which sacred pocket you put it in?
do you remember drawing blood?
do you remember discovering the scorpion in the
middle of the night and
putting a cup on top of it and
saying that mom will deal with it in
the morning?
do you remember the sweat?
the sleepovers?
the flag football?
the makeup?
the cactus needles?
the youtube videos?
the pancakes in the morning?
the glistening?
the viscosity of it all?
how about,
do you remember mom and dad both being home when
you woke up in the morning?
mom reading her third book of the day,
dad dusting his antiques for the fifth time –
two public high school teachers which a chance to
finally breathe?
you remember disneyland?
or the bonfires?
you remember summer?
how lucky were we,
to have a predestined codified period of time to detach from the daily expectation of
who we were supposed to be,
to have space to rest.
to have parents who let us.
to have a conscience free of guilt when
this rest was indulged.
it wasn’t right.
it wasn’t wrong.
it just was.
we just were.
summer feels a bit different now,
now that we’ve grown.
summer feels like you discovering that the new window ac unit you just
lugged 2 miles home from home depot doesn’t actually
fit in the specific dimensions of your window because there’s a
0.5 inch piece sticking up out of the sill that
prevents the ac unit from sitting flat,
like drenched kn95 face masks,
like longing
summer feels like the bills still due
like six showers ain’t enough
like the work schedule’s still the same
like opening up instagram and
seeing your friends tan and gorgeous and living their best lives in Bali,
while you try to figure out where you
can get dinner the cheapest tonight after your 10 hour shift.
now, summer feels like loneliness.
feels like
‘i thought i was supposed to get sick in winter but here i am with my third lower respiratory infection and my new very own health insurance plan with it’s impossible deductible and $150 out of pocket cost for an urgent care visit’
feels like questions
feels like questions with no answers
feels like i can’t even remember what question i wanted to ask
it breaks my heart,
how everything must change
how summer has made herself invisible
indistinguishable from the rest of the white noise
monotone
i wonder if this is how my mom felt at 27, too
i wonder if she wanted to create for me what she’d quickly forgotten
i wonder if that’s love
I wonder if that’s love.
Wild Garlic 