in the summer

walking around out here takes me back to summers when we were little and the world was our playground and we rarely left home aside from the occasional library trip but life was a series of expeditions and games, exploring the creek, smearing pokeberries to stain our skins purple, poison ivy and scratches and scrapes scarring our arms our legs while we ran home muddy-faced and tired to big bowls of pasta and fresh summer salads we'd help pick from the garden; baths and bedtime stories with my dad sitting on the banister outside our rooms spinning sagas and fairytales into paths for our imaginations reading in bed by the light from the window on those long summer nights, dancing with my sister across the space between our beds and whispering inventions into each other's ears behind tangled hair in the summer, in the summer.