Melissa Watkins Starr

Recreating Summer

Many years after my grandmother's death, I can still go to her house and sit in the front porch swing on a summer evening. I can talk to my cousin Donna who lives there now. Of course, the place is still lost to me. The magnolia trees are gone, and even the glow of the streetlight across the road has changed from white to pale orange. My cousin David isn't there to amuse us with preteen armpit farts. And if David's brother, Steve, were there, he probably wouldn't think to tell us that joke about three termites on a turd. For us, the idea of catching lightning bugs has lost its appeal, but even if it hadn't, who would give us a Mason jar or let us borrow a hammer and a nail to punch holes in its lid?

cicada's song
the gentle motion of a glider
that isn't there