Christina Lloyd
Summer
We lick honeysuckle stems for sweetness
here on the newly paved patio, our cranberry
plaid pinafores soiled from loamy fingers.
We’ve turned up rocks to find purple roly-polies
busy with surprise. I point and shoot the hose’s
nozzle into a plastic bucket filled with grass,
brown snails: our afterschool broth gushes
to life and we take turns churning it with a branch.
I pick out one of the snails and chase my sister
who screams and bolts. I hear that same scream
now, only this time I’m poolside and fifty and it’s
coming from a ten-year-old in an orange leopard-print
bathing suit splish-splashing with her father. He’s
just joined her, after lots of cajoling. The sun glints
off her pink-rimmed heart-shaped goggles.