when it was summer and we were young

2024

I can count the decades now 
since I was young 
in the way that
children are young
those days that were filled 
with neighborhood games 
of street hockey on rollerblades
the way the dads strung up lights
in the trees 
one year so we could 
play on into the night
red popsicle juice dripping over 
small chins
biking to a neighbor’s house to play
the riotous games of 
ghost in the graveyard 
that carried on and on into the dark
and that distinct feeling of 
summer on your 
skin
to be
showered and clean after 
a day in the sun
wet hair sticking to your back 
that slick rebirth
and fresh pajamas on

I can still find that feeling 
sometimes
in the receding afternoon hours
of heat retreating and failing sun
the visceral imprint the end of long days leave
but mostly, like this
unannounced
it finds me