I am aching.
I hear my bones creak like the front door of your summer home—
Upstate, New York. In late
July of ’95,
we were thirteen, and I had never kissed a boy before.
The light in the
sky was pink with tomorrow’s heat, and our mothers were in
the kitchen drinking beer,
flicking cigarettes
into a make-shift ashtray.
We would tell our friends at
school we were
like brother and sister, but that summer left us strangers.
You reached for my hand.
That night the lake would
be illuminated by fireworks, and I would get
the courage to tell you
that I thought I was
the reason my father left, and you would kiss my cheek because
you felt the same guilt.
Our sundial hearts
would cast shadows in the yellow porch light, reminding us
we would never be so
young and so old.
Now, I am old, and still young, but I have forgotten how
to tell time with my
heart, and you have
forgotten me—but I promise,
I still ache for the
moments to slow
just as they did
the summer we were thirteen.
This article appears in January 2016.
